CT9999.K84

My health - I hope - bottomed out today. Whether I go to class tomorrow or not is still up in the air, though I'm leaning on 'No'. I need to stop applying bandaids if I'm going to have any hope of getting through the semester; six days of quiet rest would go a long way right now. That being said, I'll have to go out tomorrow or on Friday, or I'll be eating nothing but vegetable bean soup and beets all weekend!

PGSM continues to be adorably endearing (oh my god - Luna from episode 27 on did not help the cheesy factor, but it's so damn cute) and I'm working my way through it at a decent clip. All of the characters have been growing on me; it's a part of the Sailor Moon franchise, but this show has increasingly got a life and flavour all its own. And Vicki, you were a little bit right about Minako.

I also stumbled on this little gem, which is a fantastically epic Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover. You laugh, but it's a really solid piece of work that deals realistically with the politics and social problems of first contact. It has excellent characterization as well. Lee is still idealistic and still churlish, Tigh is a bully and a drunkard who commands respect all the same, Riker is slightly blowhard, and Troi is actually a surprisingly stand-out character. The author bills Going Native as Gaeta-centric, but it's actually quite a balance narrative. Great pacing too!

I may have also climbed out of the massive spoon debt
lol, jinxed it.

Not that I've ever made fun of CSRs or other people who work in customer service, but actually doing the job is giving me whole new levels of appreciation for what you folk do. Five afternoons on the job and I am exhausted. I know it will get easier as I get more practiced, but right now, I'm simply overwhelmed. At least - at least! - I managed to make some really positive strides toward getting out of this black hole of chronic ill health I've been in for the last several months. It's like everything is interesting and bright again and I can't stop laughing. And that's good. Now, I just need to get a handle on this CSR thing!

Today was movies, movies, movies. This included Star Wars, which is still epic and awesome. I don't know that those will ever get old for me. (Oh Lando, even when betraying our intrepid heroes, you're still one of my favourites.) We went out en famile last night as well, which was lovely! I tried to get us lost in the park, but it is regrettably too small and too familiar for that. I might upload some of the pictures tomorrow, as I've been meaning to show off our blossoms and greenery since sometime in late January.

I'm going to try this really neat, new concept. It's called "living within my spoons". I'm being a little bit glib because I've been given this advice ever since my diagnosis, almost seven years ago. I know it's the best possible way to get by with chronic illness, but I haven't had the luxury that I've got right now, which is that I've got no job, no classes, nothing to demand spoons when I haven't got them. This post on Fighting Fatigue (a blog) talks about energy envelopes and while it doesn't explain enough to use the system it's talking about, I am going to work with the 0-100 scale at the bottom of the entry. My health has been bad and I've been fighting it - it can't hurt to try working with it.

I'm not sure how this is going to interact with my social life (and with LARP in particular), as the general goal is to work with the day's limits. I can usually tell in the morning what kind of shape I'm in and maybe I'll actually start doing what needs to be done in the afternoon hours, when I am at my peak, rather than doing more in the afternoon, because I am at my peak. I really want to take advantage of this opportunity now that I realise I have it.

I have also started reading American Gods, which Gaiman has made available for free on the net for the next few weeks. Four chapters in and I am so, so hooked.

So, if we're still subscribing to BBCAmerica in April, Friday nights are going to be dangerously awesome television. I will have new Battlestar at seven, Sarah Jane Adventures at eight, and new Doctor Who after that. Torchwood is still pretty interesting, though this week's episode was definitely lack-luster. I am way more distracted by the mechanics/science of that crazy thing that's happened to you-know-who than the actual plot. I am pretty sure it is not supposed to work that way. I watch a lot of TV when I am here.

I have more or less divorced myself from online fandom, aside from the commitments I've made in the Harry Potter and Torchwood fandoms. It's not a total break (Nooo! My beloved girl_doctor!), but I have discovered over the last week or two that fandom is great... so long as there is something to balance it out. And at the moment, unemployed and out of school and home sick most of the time, I have no such thing. It is time to pull out and focus on the other areas of my life. My health has also been pretty rotten since I got here and I think that distancing myself from the internet won't hurt a lick.

Epic plans for the week involve making sure the last of my grad references are in, going swimming with my friends, maybe watching Happy Feet, applying to more jobs, hiking along the water's edge, as well as cycling downtown to pick up some things. I have a necklace to mend and a geeky (I hope) calendar to buy! There's also a book kind of convention coming to town in March? Je dois me renseigner!

I feel very satisfied. I had an awkward work-out, but it's more than I've done in ages, so I'm really glad I did it. Then I went out into the garden for a good hour or more and dug up weeds, so I am relatively pain-free thanks to all of the endorphins floating around in my system. Worked a lot of stress out of my system too.

I spent most of the morning reading Doctor/Rose/Jack fic, some of it shippy, some of it friendship fic. It's a relatively good way of staying spoiler-free, as it's got to be set in Season 1 or ignore the end of Season 2 to actually work. It's also a great way to get a Captain Jack fix until I get around to catching up to his next appearance in Doctor Who and the beginning of Torchwood.

I had a hard time training yesterday. Running made me lightheaded (so I refrained from doing it after the first half hour) and the pad drills hurt to do. I have a sneaky feeling that was the stress (that turned into a small scale meltdown today) taking its toll. I need to get more pro-active about mangaging that! I should know how crippling it can be by now. All the same, training was really good and we did a good solid review of the upper-body line drills, round-house kick defenses (underhook and knee-to-elbow are awkward and need to be practiced) and those familiar pad drills.

This time of year, "balance" is always more theory and less practice.

Today was a wash. I am letting this class get to me way too much. I lost just about all will to work after this afternoon's episode; I wasn't even asking "Should I work or do (insert time waster)?". I just didn't. My emotional energy levels are through the floor, but hopefully the day off and a good night's sleep will help. I'll try and come at all of this work with a better attitude in the morning.

As I've already asked a few of you; next time I feel really ill because of the fibromyalgia, please tell me to take a hike. Or go swimming. Or do some martial arts. I swam for about fifteen minutes yesterday in the midst of one of the worst days I've had all month (and you know, that's really saying something) and it was like flipping a switch. Sure, I was still exhausted and worn down, but my god it was like night and day. The tingling warnings of a pain flare-up went away, my mental state was so much improved... it's always hard to know if exercise will just push me into a flare or will make me better, but more often than not, it's the latter. You'd think I've have learned that lesson after five and a half years :P

That being said, my mental skillz were pretty bad today and I did not study very much, despite the need for it. I did, however, go to the theatre with Myriam (Chimera, playing at the Tarragon), which was for school. I am hoping to hammer out the draft of my paper about it tommorow. I have a good track record with this class, so I'm hoping to keep it up.

I've been granted a re-write for the paper I wrote for Critical Sexualities. It was kind of a disaster, but the prof thought I was a better student than that and wants me to re-do it. Keener participation habits (which are her basis for this judgement) for the win? Next week's exam, the one I was freaking out a bit over, has been made into a take-home exam. SO, that's a weight of my shoulders, even the bar goes up with take-homes.

I am terrified that I am going to audition for all these Fridge shows and end up doing nothing but my Freezer fest stories (one of which will probably be rejected because of length). I basically passed up a free pass for a role in one of the shows (ah, Theatre Glendon inbreeding is alive and well) but I turned it down for a variety of confused reasons. I'll audition for the show anyway, but I kind want more a challenge this year? I want to prove to myself that I can land something on my own? Don't get me wrong, I had an absolute blast doing Chimera last year, but if it's the only theatre I'm doing all year and my last Fridge Festival, I'd like to do something more substantial. I'm just terrified I won't get cast at all, because as much as I love it so strongly it's in my very bones, I have jack all confidence in my own ability to act. Just so long as I don't let that fear stop me from auditioning altogether, I'll be okay. Then at least I can say I tried.

Trying to condense six and a half years worth of struggle with my body into a coherent narrative in 500 words or less is proving almost impossible, especially when I haven't yet lived through the denouement to write about it.

"This blank space to be filled 20, 30, 40, 50 years, when the writer actually has some answers."

You know, I don't really care what anyone else says. The Scott and Frost library people are lovely. They've been making phone calls and checking things out when they could have said "Nope, sorry, your problem." and been totally justified in doing it. I am so damn lucky!

It was a good weekend! Celebrated Epiphany with a dinner part at the Blonde's house and had a short, but sweet gaming session last night. They think I'm some kind of god (or some kind of demi-god, at the very least, after seeing my solar anima flare up), but probably a stupid one since I am incapable of communicating with them beyond flailing arms and facial expression. Ah, Linguistics 0. Physically, I'm still a little wrecked, but I don't believe I'm any worse off than when I started, which is a wonderful start. If I can just make it to Wednesday...

Farscape Season 4 is in! Fangirl SQUEE! The new major villain... is kind of a letdown. The show has reasonably strong writing, so I can only assume she's a ratings grab, especially considering this is the season the show was cancelled in. And to be fair, the kinds of flaws in the characterization that I will gladly overlook in a protagonist, I will use to rip a villain to bloody, bloody shreds.