Broketoe Mountain

I think I broke my toe. This isn't a statement made lightly or capriciously. This is a statement made with about three months' proof behind it. My toe (the middle one on the left foot) never used to hurt when I went to crack it. I generally crack my fingers two times a day, and my toes once a day, and my shoulder any number of times a day. I always do it in the same pattern, starting with the first toe (like the pointer finger), then move down the line to the pinky toe (or "the tiny one," as my mom likes to remind me I used to call it), and finally ending with the big toe, since it has the most satisfying crack.

Anyway, to get to the meat of the story, for the past three months, when I try to crack my middle toe, it hurts, and it won't crack. Not just that it hurts too much to bend it far enough to crack, though; I ignore the pain and bend it as far as it will physically go, and still it doesn't crack. I must conclude, therefore, that my toe is broken, and never will crack again. Le sigh.

I feel so righteous

I love the feeling that you get when you go to your classes and turn in your writing assignments, and the professor approves of the approach you took in your assignment when you explain it during class. It makes me feel so.... free. So non-guilty. So righteous.

If I can finish reading As You Like It before 11 tomorrow morning, I'll be able to continue my righteous feeling another day!

Winter isn't all fun and games

So I learned one of the harsh realities of life today: snow isn't soft. At least, old snow that's melted and refrozen several times isn't soft.

The Long Haired Christian and I went sledding last saturday, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It's like, you're sliding down a hill, really fast! So cool! So we decided that we should go every saturday. So we went today, even though it hasn't snowed for more than a week now, and the snow on the ground is not so thick and not so fresh anymore.

We stood at the top of the hill and looked down for a few minutes, then LHC went down first. She seemed to do alright, and then disappeared beyond the crest of the hill. I decided to go down after her, before she climbed back up to the top of the hill. As I was sliding in a generally downward direction, I thought to myself, "self, it seems a little faster than last week." And so it was, because the entire hill was slick with refrozen snow. I zoomed past LHC, who was starting back up the hill, then realized I was heading for the trees, and at that point I decided to try and slow down. Apparently, my body's instinctive reflex was to throw myself backwards (but in the same direction as I was sliding in, since I had gotten turned around) off the slidey-disc, and land on my head.

I always listen to my instincts, so I went ahead and landed on the back of my head, making snow shoot down the back of my shirt, and simultaneously making my skull slightly throb in pain. Turns out that LHC had similarly landed on her head, and after that first run, we decided to find a smaller hill. Too bad all the smaller hills were covered in smaller people. Not wanting to look like losers sledding with all the 5-year-olds, we went and visited LHC's sister and her fiance instead. We played cribbage, and I lost. Thus ends my story, with a moral: don't hit the back of your head on the snow, because even though it looks soft and cushy, it's really hard, and will make you cold and wet as well.

Why I love Gmail

Because when you go to your spam mailbox, at the top of the page, it gives you links to recipes for things like "Spam and Linguini" or "Ginger Spam Salad." That feature alone makes it ten times better than any other email service.

As far as I know, this isn't going to become a workout blog.

This whole "being a responsible adult" thing is totally a drag. Like, I'm supposed to be awake every day before noon? And during the wee morning hour of 8:30 I have to be at the gym? Expending energy? Ugh.

Well. I've made it the past three weeks, working out at least 3 times each week. I haven't died or fainted or broken any machines yet, and it seems to be getting a little easier to work out for an hour straight than it was three weeks ago, so I guess that's a good thing. I need to up the frequency of my workouts to every day, though. That's my current goal, which will probably take another three weeks to fulfill. After that I'll probably try out for the Olympics or something. You know, just to keep myself going.

Oh yeah, you know the other thing I don't like about being responsible? Reading stuff and being ready for classes. Also going to classes isn't fun. Well, I guess it IS fun, just, it isn't fun to decide to go. Pretty much anything that's good for me, it takes me like ALL of my willpower to get up and go do it. Like, I can be sitting in my room, thinking, "I can't possibly go to the gym today. I'm way too asleep and don't have enough time," but as long as I get shoved out the door by one of my roommates or by my guilt, I have a great time, not tired at all, completely fine with working out for an hour. Same with going to class or church or grocery shopping. Except for my class last night. I really was too tired for that, as I found out when I had the hardest time sitting upright in my chair for that hour and a half. Ugh.

And I guess that's why they call it the blues

I just spent three hours sitting on the couch, watching some PBS shows on the Blues. It was truly fascinating stuff, and I enjoyed it, but I found something odd about it. During one of the shows, they had various current musicians playing old songs by old musicians- they would show the current person singing and playing for a good thirty seconds, then their name and the name of the song would pop up on the screen. Anyway, as I was sitting there watching, they showed an older, red-haired woman singing. I looked at her, and thought to myself, "that's Bonnie Raitt." Turns out, hey, I was right! The odd thing is, I don't really know who Bonnie Raitt is. I don't know what kind of music she generally plays, I don't know what her voice sounds like. I have no idea how it is I recognize her face and place her name with it, when I know absolutely nothing about her. And that, my friends, is my slightly interesting story for the day.

You learn something new every day

Really, you do. My roommates and I are always getting into conversations that lead us to discover some fun difference or other about our cultures. My Fun Fact For the Day has to do with climate, rather than culture: it gets colder when it's sunny out, and warmer when it's cloudy and snowy. This is because the clouds help insulate everything and keep the warm air close to the ground, and when there's no clouds, the warm air just shoots up into space, making us cold. I also note that it was like thirteen degrees colder today at noon than it is right now, at midnight. For a person raised in the southwest states, this is confusing beyond belief.

Also? I check beneath my window every night, and there's an increasing amount of snowmonster bunny tracks in the snow around the plants. I keep a careful eye out, but have yet to observe the snowmonster bunnies in action. Rest assured, though, that if I do see them, you, the internet, will be the first to know. I've sometimes been accused of sticking commas into places where they don't belong. I think the fact that I just used 5 in one sentence may prove my guilt. My name is Violasaint, and I'm a Commaholic.

Hey, that makes me think- WHY, if it's called "Alcoholics Anonymous," does everybody get up and the first thing they say is their name? I guess they don't say their last name, but still. Let's keep it anonymous, folks.

Horror of Horrors!

I had a terrible nightmare last night. I actually had several interesting dreams last night, but I only remember this one in such vivid detail because it was so disturbing. I dreamt I was in a backyard, just kind of sitting around doing nothing, and I fell asleep out there. As I fell asleep, I vaguely saw a ladybug land on the ground in front of me, towards my right.

When I woke up in the yard, I saw with my sleepy, foggy eyes a moving red blob. Focusing my eyes on the blob, I realized that the ladybug had multiplied, and there were thousands of ladybugs in a horrible, writhing mass! As if this wasn't awful enough, there were several of these masses all around the yard, most of them centered around some small, defenseless plant.

The most truly horrific part of the dream was as I turned away from this undulating scene of chaos. It was at this point that I noticed one more group of ladybugs around a bean plant I had apparently grown with love and care. The beans were eaten through, and had fallen on the ground. The ladybugs were HUGE. Huge, and spotless. As in, they didn't have any spots- they were pure red and pure evil. Evil ladybugs as big as your head. I turned and ran.

I awoke in my bed, sweating and breathing hard. Man, I am so glad that was only a dream.

Ell-oh-ell, man. Ell-oh-ell.

I went to the grocery store today with my roommates. We bought $200 worth of food, which is going to have to go for a long time, for how much it cost. Anyway, that isn't what I meant to talk about at all. What I meant to tell you is that when we were walking down the aisle, there was like a row of ketchup, and (really, I actually thought this, and meant it completely seriously) I thought to myself, "why in the world would people buy ketchup from the store, when they can get it from the hermit? I mean, come on! At the mall, it costs like 100 meat, while a hermit permit is only 30 meat! What a bargain!"

Then I stopped, and realized that I've been playing like WAY too much KoL.

This is for you, Uffish.

Here I am, updating my blog instead of packing. Just to make you happy. I am sad that I couldn't go spelunking with you this christmas, and I am also sad that we couldn't go see Pride and Prejudice. Sigh. On the other hand, I'm very much looking forward to my next semester at the University of Parts Unknown, and hoping it doesn't go as fast as the first semester did. If it does, I'll be back home in like, a week, and I really want to enjoy a longer-feeling time there. Because it's fun and nice there. I especially like it there because there is snow, and as you may have noticed, I enjoy playing in the snow. In fact, I plan to do fun snow activities the first weekend back. Tonight is my last night at home, and we're going to make casts of our hands, and go out to dinner, and my sister's going to come. I'm going to steal mass quantities of music from her, and mass quantities of recipes from my mom. Happy New Year, and I'll see you maybe sometime this summer, depending on both of our schedules.