ans99 | Entries tagged with khef

So intro posts were a thing on LJ and it seems intro Plurks are a thing on, well. Plurk. But I can never think of what to say on Plurk, so I'm going to load as much stuff about myself as I can stand into this entry and then link to it forever after.

Kudos to Kristi for giving me the idea!

( a whisper in your ear? a piece of your cake? )

I just saw tonight one of the most beautiful episodes of Doctor Who. Since it just aired Saturday in the UK I suppose there are some spoilers, but I wouldn't be too worried since it is mainly a historical type episode and, like, everybody knows what happened to van Gogh. But still.

( You really should go watch it )

you know what?

i love you guys.

really and truly, i do.

even some of you who aren't reading this.

~~me being drunk right now has absolutely nothing to do with it i promise.~~

Current Music: centrifuge- pomplamoose

the search for a companion

yesterday we went to the sac spca shelter looking for rats and cats-- a rat as a companion for wilson and a cat because we both agree it's just time. finally. unfortunately we got there a half hour before closing and there was not enough time to drink in the cats and their personalities. also, they don't want to adopt out singleton rats, which makes sense but our wilsy could sure use someone. so we said we'd think about adopting a pair. it makes the most sense, because then when wilson dies we'll hopefully still have the two who'll have each other, and nobody will be alone. i guess i'm just worried about wilson getting ganged up on by the other two or something. and two rats having to be returned if things don't work out, as opposed to one. i know how to introduce them after being counseled a little, and really hope that they all just get along when we do this. i feel bad for waiting for more than two months to get this shit started. wilson seems to have bounced back and doesn't act depressed, which kinda enabled our procrastination-- but i can't be there for him all day anymore with my fulltime job, and i don't think interaction with me can really take the place of another rat who shares his space anyway, as rewarding as it seems to be for both of us.

music

today i got up early and actually practiced piano, which was an amazing feeling. i really need to do more of that. among my various twiddlings was figuring out optimal fingering for "chain reaction", original renditions of damien rice's "rootless tree" and amanda palmer's "have to drive", and slogging through this finger exercise book i got when i was 10 and have recently cracked open again to get up my finger strength and agility. i suppose it's not entirely amazing i lost much of my groove from my lapse in practicing, but it's similarly amazing how quickly it can come back if you've had enough training consistently through formative years. so i think if i just practice more i can improve and maybe get back to where i was when i was 14 and whizzing through "cristofori's dream."

at any rate, i'd at least like to be able to play the parts i *write* :/

free food and photo geeking

after that we jetted with aj to a free pasta buffet and wine tasting in shenandoah valley, which seems to be more like napa before napa was napa. it's beautiful out there, and the winery holding the buffet has some of the best wines i've ever tasted. wasn't a huge fan of their zins though, which is strange.

people have been asking me about why the buffet is free, how we heard about it, etc. ken's parents signed us up for the winery's club-- which, after tasting their wines, i have absolutely no problem with. one of the perks besides free tastings and discounts on bottles and cases is that they occasionally give their members free meals. the winery (toscana?) is super neat, and it even had keg tastings while we were there. keg tastings are apparently sneak previews of wines to come, so several of them weren't "done" yet, but to be honest they were pretty awesome already. we bought some port and a viognier.

on the way home i made ken stop a couple of times so i could take pictures. it's a lot of beautiful farmland up there. i am sure i looked like a total geek jogging down the road from the car to get a shot but i'm starting to care less and less as i age and become progressively less attractive anyway. fuck 'em, i like taking photos.

i'm not sure what the funniest part of the day was exactly-- whether it was pie in a jar, the kinda overly threatening "we can get to the fence in three seconds" beware of dog sign, aj's reaction to the chorus of "rootless tree" (a literal "WTF"), the people parked on the side of the road that we soon realized were there to couple-fight in the car rather than enjoy the scenery alongside us... so many moments. i love my friends.

polyethylene at last

after we dropped aj off at kdvs (and i had finished chasing squirrels with the camera) we went to lowe's to pick up *****!!!!!!Hooping Materials!!!!******-- i don't think i can express my excitement on that enough-- both finding the materials and the thought of getting started, yey! i was telling ken that i think this is the first thing i've been this obsessed about in a long while. since film editing maybe?

then we went out for a short run/crossfit workout. my arm is almost 100% but very obviously not, so i've been taking it easy with pullups and pushups, but i'm thinking of starting weights up again soon.

i've been playing with the gorillapod mike gave me, finally, and it is AMAZING. tonight i saw the moon and had to try it out, so there i was lying in the grass aiming the thing as people walked by staring at me from the sidewalk. it came out beautifully though, not a jiggle or a jostle. i love this thing.

i guess am a teacher (and you can too)?

thurs is my last drawing class of the quarter. i'm consistently amazed at the attrition rate of these things, especially this quarter where i've felt spread so thin that i haven't had time to do much more than read the notes i made last quarter when i rehauled the course syllabus a little. but then that syllabus was a labor of love, so maybe it's just... good the way it is? maybe it's good that i don't get a chance to think before i teach so that i can avoid getting stressed out? god, last quarter i remember the first class i taught while in the throes of a panic attack; that was something to experience for sure, although obviously not something i'd ever recommend.

one of ken's and my little rituals takes place after drawing class, when we go to burgers & brew for dinner. this pretty much started because it is the only decent thing open past ten on a thursday night, but i've really started to look forward to it. still, i'll be kind of glad to have my thursday nights open again until next quarter. i've been teaching at the cc but i haven't actually DONE anything in there yet, and that's kind of sad. i think there's only two weeks left; who's going to make that gary oldman shirt if not me???

"come to the faire!"

we're going to the maker's fair this weekend. i've never been, but it looks exciting, and also i'll see sara and karl and that'll be nice :)

when did my life get so busy? oh well; i guess i like it that way. doesn't give me time to get too miserable. someone once told me that one of the reasons i got so depressed might have something to do with boredom, and i'd believe it. it's so easy to forget about all the bad things in life when you're rushing around, but if you have too much downtime suddenly everything's all emo-town for some reason.

keep yourselves busy, folks, even if it's just staring at the moon or laughing at with your friends.

yoinked from

frozenrhino;

street photography in nyc is now Officially ok

in other news, i'm doing well. we saw slumdog millionaire over the weekend. i liked it, but still can't believe the oscar people did.

looking at new camcorders to replace the old, and by hook or by crook this time we're going to get something on the level of the panasonic gs-400. i cannot wait to get my hands on one again. i guess next month will have to be vlogaday or shortaweek or whatever. rrr.

this weekend i helped davis media access film a conference on-campus-- it was so much fun, even just standing there behind a mess of tripods and occasionally zooming in/out or panning. when i got to be on the closeup camera, it was a lot more fun (and a lot more work, because when people stand up and lecture to a hall they tend to nervously walk/shift around a bit).

my arm is healing nicely, which is a relief. now i can get back to working on

eyeteeth's picture.

in general, learning more about me and the world and the reactions i have to it and it to me. learning what keeps me happy and what needs to be let go. realizing the good things i already have and how lucky that makes me. in general, despite the depression, pretty content. it's weird.

and i've almost got my "professional" photo/sketch website finished. just putting the finishing touches on today probably and then it goes live. yay!

i know there's stuff i'm leaving out, but it's probably not that important, or if it is i'll have to remember to talk about it later.

Current Mood: better
Current Music: sarah blasko- i could never belong to you

several things i've observed in the past few days:

1. nick cave is a total drama queen.

2. i think aaron eckhart looks ten shades sexier in his two-face makeup. also, i'm aware i'm the only one in the universe who thinks that, and that it probably easily lumps me in the "psychologically ill" category, but there you go.

3. peaches is sort of female trent reznor, in heat.

wilson's slowly adapting, i think, to life without house. i'm firmly in the denial stage, however, and i keep expecting him to be there when i open their cage. it's a pretty harsh reality check i keep smacking myself with.

Current Music: Peaches - Suck and Let Go | Powered by Last.fm

because i'm pretty sure i've done this meme before. oh well. i'm supposed to tag some of you but i think everyone who would have done this has done it. so do it if you want to, i guess.

1. i've been fully cognizant of my bisexuality for a decade and still i have never kissed a girl.

2. generally, i feel more of a rapport with animals than people.

3. i have never been burned by a flame but i have such an intense fear of fire that it's taken me until last year to feel comfortable even lighting a match. conversely, i have been sliced open by numerous metal objects in my lifetime and feel perfectly comfortable around knives.

4. i have not knowingly eaten beef since i did a research paper on mad cow disease during my college days.

5. male suffering really turns me on. sorry guys.

6. for a short time in my youth i took dance and gymnastics classes. i quit gymnastics because i got some sort of pseudo-feminism going on and didn't like feeling like they were trying to get me to contort into a specific body image/feminine ideal-- and that i was failing miserably at it.

7. i'm a chronically late person and have been for as long as i can remember.

8. artistic inspiration is why i inevitably give the world one more chance. it's also why i love teaching. people just come up with the most amazing ideas sometimes, and it's all i can do to wonder why i never thought of them because they're just so obvious and wonderful and brilliant.

9. my high school friends and i used to pretend we were the beatles. i was john.

10. in middle school these same friends and i used to hide out in the art room during lunchtime so we wouldn't have to deal with any of the other students harassing us. i suppose in a way we formed our own reactive clique.

11. the reason i started photographing things was due to my fascination that you could print a memory. because of this i find it almost unbearably difficult to throw any of them away.

12. http://thedreamatists.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/dalis-dream-of-a-virgin.jpg
this is my favorite dali painting. sometimes i like to tell people he painted it for me.

13. some of the best times of my life were spent sneaking away from college for the weekend, taking a bus alone to nyc and spending that weekend with this guy i barely knew. i've never been able to see the city in the same way since, so i've always been disappointed when i've returned there.

14. i have not seen most of my extended family in a Very Long Time. there's no obvious tension, we're all just horrible at correspondence.

15. i was an avid reader as a child-- i mean like, i'd get multiple BOXES of 'em from scholastic. by the time i was in second grade they were giving me "special" spelling tests because the regular ones were too easy for me. i remember quibbling with the teacher over the correct spelling of "moustache" (she insisted it only "mustache" was acceptable until we checked the dictionary together)

16. i'm now a blue belt in kempo karate but i have a ridiculously low pain tolerance so i'm still pretty much useless at defending myself.

17. i worked on a dairy farm for a summer, and so i'm privileged enough to know the unbeatable feeling of a cow crapping on your head.

18. just about every night i have really vivid, horrifyingly fascinating dreams that could easily be horror/sci-fi b-movie plots. as a rule i'm usually left shaken from these dreams for the rest of the day.

19. when i encounter incompetence from the world i automatically want to kill myself.

20. i almost got a gig in high school doing english as a second language instructional audio tapes for i think hispanic students. i got all the way into the studio for recording before they decided i made too many "mouth noises"-- clicks and such like when you open your mouth to start talking and your tongue unsticks from the roof and so on. anyway the guy canned me right then and there. now when i hear all the voice personalities on the radio i go crazy pointing out all the mouth noises i hear. jerks.

21. i check the ceilings wherever i'm eating because i'm paranoid that a bug is going to fall from it and into my food. this is based on a true story from my childhood, where i was at a food court with a friend and a very giant, very dead hornet plummeted from above and landed smack in the middle of our table.

22. i'm so argumentative that i once wrote a five-page appeal for a parking ticket. whether they're still reading it, decided it wasn't worth it, lost my paperwork, decided that if i lost i might come after them with a shotgun, or lost track of me once i moved i'm not sure-- but i never heard from the
parking people again.

23. i have a hard time hiding my true emotions. they're written right across my face at all times, and this has gotten me into trouble time and time again.

24. all of the animals i own right now were laboratory rescues. two of them, my rats, are from my own behavioral experiment.

25. i co-starred in some doctor who fan films written and produced by james a few years ago.

Current Mood: awake WHY
Current Music: sarah blasko- at your best

this is a really interesting piece on service animals. it focuses primarily on psychiatric service animals (also known as "comfort animals") and discusses the legal struggle to define what exactly should be considered in the definition of a "service animal"-- thus allowing them access alongside their owners to various venues where animals are usually unwelcome. it emphasizes what seems to be the main problem-- the line that has to be drawn somewhere between the rights of the disabled and the need to enforce public safety.

it's a fascinating read, and it really hits home how animal companions can be a form of self-medication for many people suffering from disorders. because pets can buffer things like anxiety and depression some owners might not even be fully aware that's what's going on.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: chatter chatter chatterchatterchatter