Managed to mostly stay away from social media during Shabbos. Yay! Really felt like I recharged that way. Been cutting down the time I spend on social media today and yesterday, too. It's been nice.
Did the candles, blessings over the grape juice (I can't have wine) and challah, and online services for both Friday night and Saturday morning. Wahoo! Same as last week. Hopefully, I can make this a habit. They actually had that Saturday morning's service, rather than the week before like last week's had. That was good. I like how they make it feel like you're actually there.
Some of the night and morning services touched on Tisha B'Av. That was a bit difficult to sit through. It started Saturday night and went until Sunday night, and is a mourning holiday. We remember atrocities that happened to us in the past. Things like the Crusades, pogroms, expulsion from Spain/France/England, the Holocaust, and more. One of the main focuses is on the destruction of the 1st and 2nd temple in Jerusalem. It's the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. People fast, study the Book of Lamentations, most Torah study is forbidden, sit on low chairs or the floor (like with shiva or the week of mourning someone), some sleep on the floor, some people refrain from greeting each other, and more. I didn't observe it, and I don't think I ever have. I usually just notice it. The rabbi that did the drash (or sermon) Friday night tied it in with the recent mass shootings. It seemed to fit too well that that stuff happened close to the holiday. It was a powerful and emotional one.
For close to 5 hours on Sunday, I cleaned my bathroom. It really needed to be done. It was difficult with the pain of whatever's going on with me healthwise. I'm glad I was able to get so much done, though. I swept the floor, cleaned the toilet, did all of the shower area, sink, a cup and toothbrush holder, the counter, and dusted off the things on the counter as well as a little step stool. I didn't 'mop' the floor because the way I do it might have been too much for me on top of the other stuff. Unfortunately, Tasha decided to pee near the closed door and that leaked onto the floor. It was right after I swept. I was angry for a moment, but I don't know if she actually knows she's doing it. It was similar to when she peed on my closet door not long ago. She may have an issue with that. I was able to clean that up, too. It looks so nice in there now.
I've been having an even harder time sleeping lately. Both of my arms hurt constantly. They never really let up. They get worse when I'm lying down. It's really hard to describe the pain, but it burns and feels tight, I guess. Anyways, I decided to go to bed at a more decent time last night. I got out of bed at around 6:50am or 7am, because I couldn't stand it. I don't really like getting up earlier than 8am. So, this was weird for me. Most nights I've been in bed for even less time lately. Maybe I could look at it as being able to get more things done or something?
Got back to Duolingo's Dutch course. It had been a while. Still remembered most of it. Finished the Nature unit and started the Traffic one.
Read the most recent chapter of Ao no (Blue) Exorcist. A lot of surprises this time. With one of them, I was glad that it didn't turn out the way I thought it would. I'm still wondering about Shiemi's role, and when will Rin come back to their present time?
Tried drawing more of Junko. No matter how many times I tried, her cat ears weren't coming out right. I'll try again next time. Started thinking more about her hairstyle, too.
Edited more of Alliance. I'm surprised at the mistakes I'm finding, despite going over the beginning not that long ago. I think once I catch up to the part I know is better, I'll move on to the sequel. I don't think that one will have nearly as many mistakes.
Watched Boku no (My) Hero Academia The Movie: Futari no Hero (Two Heroes). It supposedly was also in the manga (I haven't read it), and the anime briefly hinted at it. It seems to have taken place before the last season of the anime. It was nice to see something related to the show again. The next season starts in October. Yay, soon! This one was about All Might and his old friend Dave. They met when he was a Japanese exchange student in California. In a way, it was also about them handing the torch down to their successors, Melissa (Dave's daughter who also wants to help heroes as a scientist in the future) and Deku. The action scenes were great and fast-paced.
Showing posts with label Shabbat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shabbat. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2019
Friday, August 9, 2019
International Cat Day!
This holiday was yesterday. I love cats! I love other animals as well, but cats hold a special place in my heart. Been around them since I was born. Our current cats are a Turkish Van, Natasha (Tasha for short), and a tortoiseshell (aka tortie), Rosie. Tortoiseshell isn't technically a breed. It's based on the color of their coat. They're similar to calicos this way. She's a tabby (short hair), which has stripes along with the different colors. We went through a lot of names for her, but Rosie seems to fit so well. She's glomped onto me almost since we got her. Tries to take care of me, too. She has an issue with matted fur. The vet clinic had to shave most of the mats off recently, and I've been using a grooming glove twice a day since. The mats haven't come back. Her fur is so much softer and shinier now. She seems happy about it and begs to be groomed now. She'll 'groom' me at the same time by licking my free hand. So cute!
Turkish Vans have long fur, but it's in a single layer instead of multiple. Makes it very soft. They often have color on the head and tail and sometimes parts of their legs/feet (she has some in those areas), and white for the rest of the body. Tasha is black and white. They're prone to polydactyly, which is lit. many fingers/toes. Tasha has that. Her paws are huge because of it. Yet, she has a small slender head. A collar doesn't fit her. She'll just wiggle out of it, if you manage to get it on her. She also barks like a dog when startled. Loves water. This might be because the breed comes from near Lake Van in Turkey. Pretty unique cat. Since we got Rosie, they've fought each other. However, they seem to be mellowing out. Tasha has become braver in the last couple of years. Wanting to stick around me, sleeping on my bed during the day, going downstairs and hanging out with us, watching things out the back door, etc. Things she wouldn't do before. She's standing her ground more, too. I think this has made Rosie feel even more jealous, but she's not attacking as often.
Tuesday marked the 10-year anniversary of this blog! Wahoo! Never thought I'd keep it up for as long as I have on here. This will be the 1,049th post. It'll be cool if I keep it up in some form for another 10 years, at least. Hopefully, I can get back to posting more often. The year I posted the most was in 2010. Did better than most years last year. I've also created 3 other blogs on here. The 2nd one was on what I'd say to my mom after she passed away. Similar to writing letters to her, I guess. I had that completely private where no one but me could see it. I deleted that one, because it was painful to see after a while. The 3rd one was supposed to be on various different topics and my point of view on them. That became inactive after a few posts. Maybe I'll get back to it in the future. It was an interesting concept. The final one was on practicing my Japanese. I even switched to the Blogger Japanese base where the comments, headings, etc. are all in the language. They even email you in Japanese if there's an alert of some sort. It was cool. Might go back to it in the future, and/or make another language learning one. As an example, since I'm studying it right now, I could make a Dutch one. I did have a few comments on the Japanese one from actual Japanese people. That was nice. I've read you can create 100 blogs through Blogger. That's way too many to keep up with. I also like the lists feature. I can keep up with things and see what I've finished at a glance. The links list is probably not completely up to date, but that's good to have as reference, too. There's a lot you can customize. I stuck with one background/configuration until just a few years ago. It looks quite different now. I think I was forced to, because they weren't able to support the old version. I like it, even if it's taken me a little while to get used to. It's pretty great to be able to link to my books (with the cover art) with a widget on here, too. Even if I'm a little embarrassed by my 1st book after editing it. I need to go over the beginning yet again. Then I'll go through the sequel, and finally resubmit both of them for publishing. Anyways, this is like my little home online.
I've been using Pandora since college. It's really gotten to know my 'tastes' in music over the years. (Of what's in their database.) I've loved that it picks new music based on things you've liked already. I recently got Pandora Premium. I had been using the free version. They give you the 1st month free, and then start the subscription. There are no ads and I think their recommendations have been much better. I haven't looked at My Thumbprint radio yet. I've just kept listening to my Shuffle one. It shuffles the ones I've thumbed up and suggests new tunes. I'm not sure how different Thumbprint would be. I guess I can see in the future.
Recently started watching Naka no Hito Genome [Jikkyouchuu] (The Ones Within- Genome [Now Streaming]). It's been very interesting so far. A very different twist on a currently popular genre, isekai. Isekai (different world) is when people from our world are transported, reincarnated, or trapped in a parallel universe. Sometimes this works in reverse. It's usually fantasy or horror based, and a lot of them are influenced by or actually in their own video games (mostly rpg's). I think it's a fun one, but there have been a lot of them in the last few anime seasons. Some people are sick of them. This one has a group of gaming 'streamers' or video uploaders from our world transported to a place called 13th Avenue. Each player specializes in a certain type of game, like cultivation games, fighting games, puzzle games, horror games, etc. A man in an alpaca mask, called Paca, gathers them together and explains that they have to clear all the stages and collect tokens. They must reach 100 million viewers at the same time in the 'livestream'. The viewers are watching everything they do. Even when they're not participating in a stage. There are a certain number of people allowed to do each one. If you go against Paca the punishment could be deadly. They can die or be injured in the stages, too. It's really dark at times, which is my kind of thing.
It got a bit personal for me in one of the last episodes I saw (I'm not up to date on the series yet). The main character, Akatsuki, has a similar dominant handedness as me. We're both essentially cross-dominant. We tend to prefer a certain hand for certain tasks, and this can switch at times. For instance, I mostly write with my right hand, carry an umbrella in my left, might kick a ball with either foot or catch it with either hand (depends on which is closest), eat with a fork and knife similar to a left-handed person but a little different (I've been told it's weird, but it makes the most sense to me) etc. They say he's ambidextrous, but was forced to do things like write with his right instead of left. They do suspect a lot of cross-dominants are actually ambidextrous, and it wouldn't surprise me if I was. Left-handed people weren't treated very well even when I was in elementary school. Scared me enough I tried to make sure I used my right hand for at least writing. I'm surprised they had a character like that.
He has a stalker that's one of the gamers. She has a wall covered in pics of him, and has been 'studying' him since they met. She knew about the cross-dominant thing. I've had 3 or 4 stalkers in the past. 1 woman and 2 or 3 men. A couple of them had done a similar thing with pics of me. The 1st one I found out at a Jewish youth group camping trip. I think I was 14 or 15? He had made a shrine with pics of me, the shoe I lost that day, and candles all around in his cabin room. I accidentally found it along with a friend. Kept blowing kisses at me the rest of the trip, and followed me all the way home. Another one, a roommate at a dorm in college, had made a huge collage of pics of me sleeping and other times without my knowledge. She also wrote a 5-page letter that she gave me when I moved out. Funnily enough, I had to move because of another stalker. That one was much scarier/violent, but he never made collages of me. That I know of, anyway. The anime did bring back those memories. It was creepy enough with what she did/was doing in it. I like Akatsuki even more so now.
Watched Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler): Book of the Atlantic. It's an anime movie based on the manga's Luxury Liner or Campania arc. Campania was the name of the ship. It was one of the best arcs in the manga. The zombies were introduced, a lot was revealed about Undertaker, and Lizzie has some major character development. A lot of people hated her before that arc. The zombies in it aren't exactly like how most are portrayed. They crave souls, not brains, and you can't be zombified if you're bitten/injured by them. There's a special way to make a zombie that only the fugitive shinigami (lit. death g-d, like the grim reaper) can do. He really was experimenting to try and bring back the dead, not necessarily make zombies. Recently, in the manga, he still hasn't truly perfected the process of making a person come back to life with their soul intact, awareness, memories, same personality, without needing blood transfusions, etc. He's come very close, though. I thought it'd be great to see. It wasn't available for roughly 2 1/2 years. I thought it was pretty well done. A lot of the animation was stunning. Lizzie's fight with the zombies really looked like a ballet, which is like how it was portrayed in the manga. It was oddly beautiful. Sebastian's 1st fight with them was portrayed as a crazy violent demonic dance. They came close. Interesting to see both animated. There's only so much the manga can do. They followed almost everything exactly the way it was in the manga, like the other 'Books'. There's a season on the Circus arc, and another on the Detective arc. I hope they adapt the other story arcs in the future. There have been several since.
Finished Ultraviolet on Netflix. It's a Polish detective show. Ultraviolet or UV is an online amateur detective forum. They often solve cases much faster than the actual detectives, so there's usually tension between them. The main character, Ola, becomes a member after witnessing a crime. A retired cop and a detective friend help her and UV. The last case was more intense than the others. It'd be cool if another season came out. The characters were very likable.
Started watching Deadwind, but decided to drop it. It's a Finnish detective show. There's not much humor (even dark humor), everyone looks so depressed, and the acting isn't great.
Tried out Memories of the Alhambra last night. It's a fantasy Korean drama mostly set in Spain. It sounded really interesting and is highly rated. Dropped it after that first episode, because I couldn't get passed how much of a jerk the male lead was, and weak the female lead was. Seemed sexist. The scenery and game stuff was impressive, though. I brought up what I thought about it in my feed on MyDramaList, and people really seem mixed on it. Some said you should just ignore the female lead. It's supposed to be only about the man. Focus more on the game. Others also hated the sexism and couldn't get passed 1 or 2 episodes. Everyone agreed that there was sexism in it, yet the ones that loved it thought it wasn't a big deal. I wonder if there's a lot of sexism amongst Asian drama fans or they just ignore it? I don't watch that many romance dramas, but it seems like a theme in most of them of that genre around the world. Particularly of non-LGBTQ+ romance shows. I've watched some other types of Korean shows, usually detective ones, that didn't really have that element. In fact, the women were kickass and strong both physically and personality-wise. So, it doesn't seem like just a cultural thing to me. I'll try Possessed next. It's a Korean supernatural detective show.
Wednesday, we went to the dump and recycled a lot of styrofoam. Got rid of the old computers (Mom's, my parent's, and mine), printers, monitors, and keyboards. There was also a cat bed that neither cat really was into, a rope I got from my horse management class, and some of my really old bedding. Felt a little sentimental about the rope, but it was ragged, pricked me every time I touched it, really old, and there really isn't anything I'd use it for. I think it was one of the ropes I used with the horse assigned to me. He was one of the most abused horses and took a while to break. After that he was glued to me. He wouldn't let anyone else touch him, and was super jealous if I took care of another horse. Was super gentle with me, and if he thought he stepped on me he was beside himself and visibly looked hurt. There were a couple of times like that, but he just would graze my shoe. I hope he found a nice home after the stables were torn down. The new electronics made a lot of styrofoam. It was nice we could find a place to recycle it.
While we were out around Tacoma, we decided to go to Half Price Books. I found a cookbook called the Joy of Chinese Cooking for about $6. Thought that was really good. It's from the early 80's, so might not be the best. There's a lot of fried dishes. (Like deep-fried, not referring to stir-fried.) I'm not sure if that's really the way authentic Chinese food is. It does indicate things like what's classic, what's festival/party food, what utensils/methods to use, time, and more. That's handy. They don't always list amount of servings, which makes it a little difficult. There's also info on how the Chinese view food, philosophy of it, etiquette, cookware, history of some ingredients, etc. That stuff's always interesting to read about. We went to another HPB, but I didn't find anything else. Last time I went to HPB I found a cheese encyclopedia for around $2. It wasn't thin and was in good shape. That's been interesting. Haven't looked at it often, but it's a wealth of info just sitting there. It features cheeses from around the world, even from places most people don't think about. It'd be cool to try out more cheeses and look them up beforehand.
Went to Krispy Kreme after all that. Needed something with my 'dinner' pills, since I knew I'd have a late dinner and I need to stick to having my pills at certain times. Have to have food with them. I've only been there once or twice, and it's been a very long time. Got their cake batter donut and chocolate milk. I didn't know they had different fillings besides custard or lemon. This was cake batter flavored frosting. It was surprisingly light and tasty. Hadn't had chocolate milk in an even longer time, so that was an experience, too.
I did manage to mostly stay away from social media last Shabbos. (Friday night until Saturday night. Shabbos is Yiddish for Shabbat, and Shabbat is our day of rest.) It felt nice. Haven't done that in a while, and it felt more like a 'rest' this way. I also got to lighting the candles, saying the blessings, and attended online services for both Friday night and Saturday morning. Did quite a lot more than what I have been doing lately. I used to try to at least do the candles/blessings. Hopefully, I can do the same things as last time this Shabbos. I was kind of disappointed by last Saturday morning online services, because they had technical difficulties and just reuploaded the service from the week before instead. Didn't realize it until about halfway through. Felt a bit off. The night one was nice, though. They seem like a much more diverse congregation than some out there. Probably because they're in NYC. It was still cool to see.
Turkish Vans have long fur, but it's in a single layer instead of multiple. Makes it very soft. They often have color on the head and tail and sometimes parts of their legs/feet (she has some in those areas), and white for the rest of the body. Tasha is black and white. They're prone to polydactyly, which is lit. many fingers/toes. Tasha has that. Her paws are huge because of it. Yet, she has a small slender head. A collar doesn't fit her. She'll just wiggle out of it, if you manage to get it on her. She also barks like a dog when startled. Loves water. This might be because the breed comes from near Lake Van in Turkey. Pretty unique cat. Since we got Rosie, they've fought each other. However, they seem to be mellowing out. Tasha has become braver in the last couple of years. Wanting to stick around me, sleeping on my bed during the day, going downstairs and hanging out with us, watching things out the back door, etc. Things she wouldn't do before. She's standing her ground more, too. I think this has made Rosie feel even more jealous, but she's not attacking as often.
Tuesday marked the 10-year anniversary of this blog! Wahoo! Never thought I'd keep it up for as long as I have on here. This will be the 1,049th post. It'll be cool if I keep it up in some form for another 10 years, at least. Hopefully, I can get back to posting more often. The year I posted the most was in 2010. Did better than most years last year. I've also created 3 other blogs on here. The 2nd one was on what I'd say to my mom after she passed away. Similar to writing letters to her, I guess. I had that completely private where no one but me could see it. I deleted that one, because it was painful to see after a while. The 3rd one was supposed to be on various different topics and my point of view on them. That became inactive after a few posts. Maybe I'll get back to it in the future. It was an interesting concept. The final one was on practicing my Japanese. I even switched to the Blogger Japanese base where the comments, headings, etc. are all in the language. They even email you in Japanese if there's an alert of some sort. It was cool. Might go back to it in the future, and/or make another language learning one. As an example, since I'm studying it right now, I could make a Dutch one. I did have a few comments on the Japanese one from actual Japanese people. That was nice. I've read you can create 100 blogs through Blogger. That's way too many to keep up with. I also like the lists feature. I can keep up with things and see what I've finished at a glance. The links list is probably not completely up to date, but that's good to have as reference, too. There's a lot you can customize. I stuck with one background/configuration until just a few years ago. It looks quite different now. I think I was forced to, because they weren't able to support the old version. I like it, even if it's taken me a little while to get used to. It's pretty great to be able to link to my books (with the cover art) with a widget on here, too. Even if I'm a little embarrassed by my 1st book after editing it. I need to go over the beginning yet again. Then I'll go through the sequel, and finally resubmit both of them for publishing. Anyways, this is like my little home online.
I've been using Pandora since college. It's really gotten to know my 'tastes' in music over the years. (Of what's in their database.) I've loved that it picks new music based on things you've liked already. I recently got Pandora Premium. I had been using the free version. They give you the 1st month free, and then start the subscription. There are no ads and I think their recommendations have been much better. I haven't looked at My Thumbprint radio yet. I've just kept listening to my Shuffle one. It shuffles the ones I've thumbed up and suggests new tunes. I'm not sure how different Thumbprint would be. I guess I can see in the future.
Recently started watching Naka no Hito Genome [Jikkyouchuu] (The Ones Within- Genome [Now Streaming]). It's been very interesting so far. A very different twist on a currently popular genre, isekai. Isekai (different world) is when people from our world are transported, reincarnated, or trapped in a parallel universe. Sometimes this works in reverse. It's usually fantasy or horror based, and a lot of them are influenced by or actually in their own video games (mostly rpg's). I think it's a fun one, but there have been a lot of them in the last few anime seasons. Some people are sick of them. This one has a group of gaming 'streamers' or video uploaders from our world transported to a place called 13th Avenue. Each player specializes in a certain type of game, like cultivation games, fighting games, puzzle games, horror games, etc. A man in an alpaca mask, called Paca, gathers them together and explains that they have to clear all the stages and collect tokens. They must reach 100 million viewers at the same time in the 'livestream'. The viewers are watching everything they do. Even when they're not participating in a stage. There are a certain number of people allowed to do each one. If you go against Paca the punishment could be deadly. They can die or be injured in the stages, too. It's really dark at times, which is my kind of thing.
It got a bit personal for me in one of the last episodes I saw (I'm not up to date on the series yet). The main character, Akatsuki, has a similar dominant handedness as me. We're both essentially cross-dominant. We tend to prefer a certain hand for certain tasks, and this can switch at times. For instance, I mostly write with my right hand, carry an umbrella in my left, might kick a ball with either foot or catch it with either hand (depends on which is closest), eat with a fork and knife similar to a left-handed person but a little different (I've been told it's weird, but it makes the most sense to me) etc. They say he's ambidextrous, but was forced to do things like write with his right instead of left. They do suspect a lot of cross-dominants are actually ambidextrous, and it wouldn't surprise me if I was. Left-handed people weren't treated very well even when I was in elementary school. Scared me enough I tried to make sure I used my right hand for at least writing. I'm surprised they had a character like that.
He has a stalker that's one of the gamers. She has a wall covered in pics of him, and has been 'studying' him since they met. She knew about the cross-dominant thing. I've had 3 or 4 stalkers in the past. 1 woman and 2 or 3 men. A couple of them had done a similar thing with pics of me. The 1st one I found out at a Jewish youth group camping trip. I think I was 14 or 15? He had made a shrine with pics of me, the shoe I lost that day, and candles all around in his cabin room. I accidentally found it along with a friend. Kept blowing kisses at me the rest of the trip, and followed me all the way home. Another one, a roommate at a dorm in college, had made a huge collage of pics of me sleeping and other times without my knowledge. She also wrote a 5-page letter that she gave me when I moved out. Funnily enough, I had to move because of another stalker. That one was much scarier/violent, but he never made collages of me. That I know of, anyway. The anime did bring back those memories. It was creepy enough with what she did/was doing in it. I like Akatsuki even more so now.
Watched Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler): Book of the Atlantic. It's an anime movie based on the manga's Luxury Liner or Campania arc. Campania was the name of the ship. It was one of the best arcs in the manga. The zombies were introduced, a lot was revealed about Undertaker, and Lizzie has some major character development. A lot of people hated her before that arc. The zombies in it aren't exactly like how most are portrayed. They crave souls, not brains, and you can't be zombified if you're bitten/injured by them. There's a special way to make a zombie that only the fugitive shinigami (lit. death g-d, like the grim reaper) can do. He really was experimenting to try and bring back the dead, not necessarily make zombies. Recently, in the manga, he still hasn't truly perfected the process of making a person come back to life with their soul intact, awareness, memories, same personality, without needing blood transfusions, etc. He's come very close, though. I thought it'd be great to see. It wasn't available for roughly 2 1/2 years. I thought it was pretty well done. A lot of the animation was stunning. Lizzie's fight with the zombies really looked like a ballet, which is like how it was portrayed in the manga. It was oddly beautiful. Sebastian's 1st fight with them was portrayed as a crazy violent demonic dance. They came close. Interesting to see both animated. There's only so much the manga can do. They followed almost everything exactly the way it was in the manga, like the other 'Books'. There's a season on the Circus arc, and another on the Detective arc. I hope they adapt the other story arcs in the future. There have been several since.
Finished Ultraviolet on Netflix. It's a Polish detective show. Ultraviolet or UV is an online amateur detective forum. They often solve cases much faster than the actual detectives, so there's usually tension between them. The main character, Ola, becomes a member after witnessing a crime. A retired cop and a detective friend help her and UV. The last case was more intense than the others. It'd be cool if another season came out. The characters were very likable.
Started watching Deadwind, but decided to drop it. It's a Finnish detective show. There's not much humor (even dark humor), everyone looks so depressed, and the acting isn't great.
Tried out Memories of the Alhambra last night. It's a fantasy Korean drama mostly set in Spain. It sounded really interesting and is highly rated. Dropped it after that first episode, because I couldn't get passed how much of a jerk the male lead was, and weak the female lead was. Seemed sexist. The scenery and game stuff was impressive, though. I brought up what I thought about it in my feed on MyDramaList, and people really seem mixed on it. Some said you should just ignore the female lead. It's supposed to be only about the man. Focus more on the game. Others also hated the sexism and couldn't get passed 1 or 2 episodes. Everyone agreed that there was sexism in it, yet the ones that loved it thought it wasn't a big deal. I wonder if there's a lot of sexism amongst Asian drama fans or they just ignore it? I don't watch that many romance dramas, but it seems like a theme in most of them of that genre around the world. Particularly of non-LGBTQ+ romance shows. I've watched some other types of Korean shows, usually detective ones, that didn't really have that element. In fact, the women were kickass and strong both physically and personality-wise. So, it doesn't seem like just a cultural thing to me. I'll try Possessed next. It's a Korean supernatural detective show.
Wednesday, we went to the dump and recycled a lot of styrofoam. Got rid of the old computers (Mom's, my parent's, and mine), printers, monitors, and keyboards. There was also a cat bed that neither cat really was into, a rope I got from my horse management class, and some of my really old bedding. Felt a little sentimental about the rope, but it was ragged, pricked me every time I touched it, really old, and there really isn't anything I'd use it for. I think it was one of the ropes I used with the horse assigned to me. He was one of the most abused horses and took a while to break. After that he was glued to me. He wouldn't let anyone else touch him, and was super jealous if I took care of another horse. Was super gentle with me, and if he thought he stepped on me he was beside himself and visibly looked hurt. There were a couple of times like that, but he just would graze my shoe. I hope he found a nice home after the stables were torn down. The new electronics made a lot of styrofoam. It was nice we could find a place to recycle it.
While we were out around Tacoma, we decided to go to Half Price Books. I found a cookbook called the Joy of Chinese Cooking for about $6. Thought that was really good. It's from the early 80's, so might not be the best. There's a lot of fried dishes. (Like deep-fried, not referring to stir-fried.) I'm not sure if that's really the way authentic Chinese food is. It does indicate things like what's classic, what's festival/party food, what utensils/methods to use, time, and more. That's handy. They don't always list amount of servings, which makes it a little difficult. There's also info on how the Chinese view food, philosophy of it, etiquette, cookware, history of some ingredients, etc. That stuff's always interesting to read about. We went to another HPB, but I didn't find anything else. Last time I went to HPB I found a cheese encyclopedia for around $2. It wasn't thin and was in good shape. That's been interesting. Haven't looked at it often, but it's a wealth of info just sitting there. It features cheeses from around the world, even from places most people don't think about. It'd be cool to try out more cheeses and look them up beforehand.
Went to Krispy Kreme after all that. Needed something with my 'dinner' pills, since I knew I'd have a late dinner and I need to stick to having my pills at certain times. Have to have food with them. I've only been there once or twice, and it's been a very long time. Got their cake batter donut and chocolate milk. I didn't know they had different fillings besides custard or lemon. This was cake batter flavored frosting. It was surprisingly light and tasty. Hadn't had chocolate milk in an even longer time, so that was an experience, too.
I did manage to mostly stay away from social media last Shabbos. (Friday night until Saturday night. Shabbos is Yiddish for Shabbat, and Shabbat is our day of rest.) It felt nice. Haven't done that in a while, and it felt more like a 'rest' this way. I also got to lighting the candles, saying the blessings, and attended online services for both Friday night and Saturday morning. Did quite a lot more than what I have been doing lately. I used to try to at least do the candles/blessings. Hopefully, I can do the same things as last time this Shabbos. I was kind of disappointed by last Saturday morning online services, because they had technical difficulties and just reuploaded the service from the week before instead. Didn't realize it until about halfway through. Felt a bit off. The night one was nice, though. They seem like a much more diverse congregation than some out there. Probably because they're in NYC. It was still cool to see.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
International Tiger Day!
This holiday was yesterday. Tigers are one of my fave animals. More specifically, the white Siberian tiger. It's a day to raise awareness for tiger conservation. It was created in 2010 at the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit.
I forgot to mention last time that I got new jeans. I was wearing my oldest pair for a while beforehand. The ones I mainly wore on laundry days. The 'newer' pair had a huge hole, so they had to be thrown out. They were also a couple of years old, the oldest pair was a few years older. I'm still in the 'Misses' department instead of 'Women's'. Women's is for the bigger sizes. Yay! I've gone back up a size, though. The pair last time was the same size I was in high school. Maybe keeping up with adding more exercise will help.
I've decided to switch up my strategy for my walks. I thought just before dinner would make it easier. However, that's often around the time when it starts to cool off during a hot day. It's often still too hot for me. So, I decided that right after breakfast or brunch would be best. It's usually not too bad then, and it'd probably fit for any season. I remember in the past I'd get up early enough to do one of my walks around sunrise. Easier to do that during winter. I'd also take a walk at sunset. This way I'd have incentive to go out. Might change to that sort of thing during fall and winter. If I do it after breakfast, I might be able to motivate myself to go again later in the day, too. I started this new way today. Was going to yesterday, but I was doing laundry for most of the day. Went out for a while for shopping and dinner. Probably got enough walking in with just that stuff anyway.
I thought about planning my meals for the week on Sundays. This way, at least for dinner, I wouldn't waste time thinking about what to have. I can plan out those Pinterest recipes then, too.
There have been 'new' visible symptoms of whatever's going on lately. I've had a weird blister-like or 'waxy' patch on one of my fingertips for a few months. It started small and barely noticeable. Mainly it was through touch, not much to see. It's grown and thickened over time. Much more visible and almost looks plastic-like. Takes up roughly 3/4 of that fingertip now. I've started to get more on other fingertips. They seem to be growing and thickening faster. They don't necessarily hurt until I grip something with them. Then, it's a searing pain. They're not callouses. I definitely know what those feel like on my hands. They're quite different.
My knuckles and skin have gotten shinier and tougher. I've also found lumps near some of my knuckles. They're growing. Most of the time they don't hurt. They just feel weird. There's another lump on the back of my neck that isn't growing, but is bigger than the others. Wonder if that's an enlarged lymph node?
I've also been getting weird flakes coming from the edges of my right eyelid. It seemed like it was around my tear ducts, but the flakes are slowly coming out of the upper middle edge area, too. I don't think I have ducts there. They're getting bigger and harder to pluck out.
Looking most of this stuff up, it seems I might have scleroderma. (Sclero is lit. 'hard', and derma is 'skin'.) It seems to fit even more than when I thought it was dermatomyositis (a skin and muscle disease). Especially, with these newer symptoms. It tends to start with joint pain, joint swelling, redness on the face and scalp and other areas, and muscle pain/weakness. That's how mine first started, that I know of. It often progresses slowly at first, and is misdiagnosed at the beginning. I haven't been tested for it yet. One of the few that I haven't had.
I almost wonder if I've been experiencing symptoms for longer. It can also cause collagenous colitis, which is a type of microscopic colitis. It's a more rare form of IBD than UC and Crohn's. A collagen band wraps around the colon while it's being attacked like colitis in general, with the ulcers/sores eating away at it inside. It creates scarring in the colon, too. The GI that told me there was a lot of scarring in mine was slightly puzzled at first by it. It would explain that. It also can cause LPR or larynpharyngeal reflux, which is what they said I probably have. It can cause dysphagia, too. It can affect the lungs, which makes me wonder about the lung issues I had a long time ago. It stiffens and hardens skin, blood vessels, the lungs, heart, the digestive tract, etc. It would explain a lot if that's what it is.
I plan to make an appointment to talk about this stuff with my primary doc soon. At least someone on my 'team' will know about it. My next rheumatologist appointment is at the end of September. That's a long time, but it's the soonest they had. I plan to make an appointment to see a dermatologist, too. Hopefully, it'll be for sooner and they might be able to help before that other appointment.
I plan to get back to playing my clarinet in September. My hands are still in a lot of pain, and I think my circular breathing is a bit more difficult now. Hopefully, it'll either calm down more by then, or I'll be on some sort of treatment to help. Even if it's the same, I'll try to push through it, but not push myself too hard. Hard to find that balance. I'd like to work up to practicing for an hour each time, too. Haven't played since February, because of this stuff. Long time for me. When I was playing more regularly, I thought it'd be great after a certain amount of time (playing more up to par) that I'd listen to recordings if there are any of the pieces I play. After a while of doing that and playing those pieces again, I was thinking of recording myself. Then, I'd play it back and try to correct things more. Eventually, I'd post the more 'perfected' recordings as vids to youtube. I don't want to share an actual vid of me playing. I'd probably mess up. It'll be interesting to read the feedback from it. I'll have to filter out the trolls.
I'm also thinking of doing my own vlog on youtube in September. I tried once, but my phone wasn't the best for it. I now have a webcam built into my 'new' computer. (It'll be a year old this October. I think that's still new.) I've never used it, so it'll be something to test out. It should be better. I've always had a weird thing about seeing/hearing myself in media. Even after losing so much weight and having my hair styled the way I want. This might help with that. I'll do an intro vid, then some vids about what some things mean (like aro, ace, etc.), details, and my story with things. Then, either go over topics people ask about or updates on my life. Some ideas for it, at least. I'm thinking of doing it once a week like many youtubers.
I want to be more observant, so I'll try going in steps. Little things at first like, at the very least, lighting the candles/blessings at the start of Shabbos (Friday night). Doing that either before dinner at home, or if I eat out, when I come home. I can have my own services with the siddur or prayer book I have, or follow online streaming ones. The online one I tend to use the most is Central Synagogue in NYC. Might try others in the future, but it's a beautiful building and I like most of their services. They stream them live every Friday night and Saturday morning. So, you know they're consistent. They're archived, too. So, if you miss when they streamed it, you can still catch it. That's handy considering they're 3 hours earlier. Start with doing the Friday night ones every time. Then, add Saturday morning ones. Read the weekly parsha, eventually do Havdallah (the ending ceremony), and more. The siddur I have also has weekday prayers. More observant Jews pray 3 times a day. (Morning, afternoon, and evening.) I might add that, too. They're shorter than the ones for Shabbos. We'll see. I might add in the blessings before and after meals in the distant future, as well. I've just been off and on with Shabbos stuff. Sometimes I'll go for a few months without even lighting the candles. I feel I need to change that. I'll also try to cut my social media time more that day. Eventually, it'll be great if I stayed away completely from it then.
Since I've been immunosuppressed, and my current med works similarly, I've stayed away from going to shul. (Shul is Yiddish for synagogue.) I felt weird about our local ones as it was at the time, anyways. The last High Holiday services I went to, which was just after starting my 1st med for colitis (azathioprine, which is a strong immunosuppressant), I was very sick afterwards. I think that was the last time I went to services. I'm not taking that risk in the future. Even if I did things like put a high-grade hospital mask on and sat as far as I could from people (and told them not to hug me), it wouldn't seem right. There's also still that risk. I feel even more nervous then before when I'm in a very crowded room in general because of it. Before being on immunosuppressants, I only had to handle having agoraphobia, which is bad enough.
I'm going to try and cut down on social media during the rest of the week, too. It's just felt like too much. I still want to stay on top of it, so I'll go through it occasionally. I'll time it in small chunks. I'll always check notifications if I have them, and will post personal stuff like statuses, my blog posts, art, check-ins, etc. the rest of the time. I might go through more of my feeds when I'm waiting for food or something. This will help a lot. It already has a bit this week.
I got my haircut recently. I was hoping to get it dyed at the same appointment, but they didn't have the time. They cut it a little shorter than I expected. I told her shoulder length, and she did it a little shorter. Took off 6" or 7". About 4" or 5" of that was from the 7 months in between. It's been growing faster than it used to. It's falling out a lot more than it used to, as well...Makes it feel a little weird. The bald spots still aren't that visible unless you lift up certain patches of hair. A shorter style is good for the summer, but next time I might say a touch passed the top of my shoulders. They had a 'color consult' at the end. I want to have purple, green, and blue in it. I imagine those colors being a mixture throughout. Hard to describe, I guess. I was able to show them something similar from a Google search in pics. Some call it a mermaid style or oil slick. They'll bleach my hair first, then tone it and add color. Everyone there sounded so excited about it. Even about the concept. Those 3 colors are in the LGBTQ+ flags I'm under. They told me they get a lot of enby clients that get theirs dyed. For many people it's a thing because that's what they can have control over, and may be able to afford more than the medical stuff for transitioning. It'll be my first time, and I wanted something different. Also, the hair loss makes me feel like doing something fun with it for the time being. Getting more of those white hairs, too. Lots of reasons for me, actually. They told me it'll take 4 hours. That'll be interesting. I'm having it done next month.
I forgot to mention last time that I got new jeans. I was wearing my oldest pair for a while beforehand. The ones I mainly wore on laundry days. The 'newer' pair had a huge hole, so they had to be thrown out. They were also a couple of years old, the oldest pair was a few years older. I'm still in the 'Misses' department instead of 'Women's'. Women's is for the bigger sizes. Yay! I've gone back up a size, though. The pair last time was the same size I was in high school. Maybe keeping up with adding more exercise will help.
I've decided to switch up my strategy for my walks. I thought just before dinner would make it easier. However, that's often around the time when it starts to cool off during a hot day. It's often still too hot for me. So, I decided that right after breakfast or brunch would be best. It's usually not too bad then, and it'd probably fit for any season. I remember in the past I'd get up early enough to do one of my walks around sunrise. Easier to do that during winter. I'd also take a walk at sunset. This way I'd have incentive to go out. Might change to that sort of thing during fall and winter. If I do it after breakfast, I might be able to motivate myself to go again later in the day, too. I started this new way today. Was going to yesterday, but I was doing laundry for most of the day. Went out for a while for shopping and dinner. Probably got enough walking in with just that stuff anyway.
I thought about planning my meals for the week on Sundays. This way, at least for dinner, I wouldn't waste time thinking about what to have. I can plan out those Pinterest recipes then, too.
There have been 'new' visible symptoms of whatever's going on lately. I've had a weird blister-like or 'waxy' patch on one of my fingertips for a few months. It started small and barely noticeable. Mainly it was through touch, not much to see. It's grown and thickened over time. Much more visible and almost looks plastic-like. Takes up roughly 3/4 of that fingertip now. I've started to get more on other fingertips. They seem to be growing and thickening faster. They don't necessarily hurt until I grip something with them. Then, it's a searing pain. They're not callouses. I definitely know what those feel like on my hands. They're quite different.
My knuckles and skin have gotten shinier and tougher. I've also found lumps near some of my knuckles. They're growing. Most of the time they don't hurt. They just feel weird. There's another lump on the back of my neck that isn't growing, but is bigger than the others. Wonder if that's an enlarged lymph node?
I've also been getting weird flakes coming from the edges of my right eyelid. It seemed like it was around my tear ducts, but the flakes are slowly coming out of the upper middle edge area, too. I don't think I have ducts there. They're getting bigger and harder to pluck out.
Looking most of this stuff up, it seems I might have scleroderma. (Sclero is lit. 'hard', and derma is 'skin'.) It seems to fit even more than when I thought it was dermatomyositis (a skin and muscle disease). Especially, with these newer symptoms. It tends to start with joint pain, joint swelling, redness on the face and scalp and other areas, and muscle pain/weakness. That's how mine first started, that I know of. It often progresses slowly at first, and is misdiagnosed at the beginning. I haven't been tested for it yet. One of the few that I haven't had.
I almost wonder if I've been experiencing symptoms for longer. It can also cause collagenous colitis, which is a type of microscopic colitis. It's a more rare form of IBD than UC and Crohn's. A collagen band wraps around the colon while it's being attacked like colitis in general, with the ulcers/sores eating away at it inside. It creates scarring in the colon, too. The GI that told me there was a lot of scarring in mine was slightly puzzled at first by it. It would explain that. It also can cause LPR or larynpharyngeal reflux, which is what they said I probably have. It can cause dysphagia, too. It can affect the lungs, which makes me wonder about the lung issues I had a long time ago. It stiffens and hardens skin, blood vessels, the lungs, heart, the digestive tract, etc. It would explain a lot if that's what it is.
I plan to make an appointment to talk about this stuff with my primary doc soon. At least someone on my 'team' will know about it. My next rheumatologist appointment is at the end of September. That's a long time, but it's the soonest they had. I plan to make an appointment to see a dermatologist, too. Hopefully, it'll be for sooner and they might be able to help before that other appointment.
I plan to get back to playing my clarinet in September. My hands are still in a lot of pain, and I think my circular breathing is a bit more difficult now. Hopefully, it'll either calm down more by then, or I'll be on some sort of treatment to help. Even if it's the same, I'll try to push through it, but not push myself too hard. Hard to find that balance. I'd like to work up to practicing for an hour each time, too. Haven't played since February, because of this stuff. Long time for me. When I was playing more regularly, I thought it'd be great after a certain amount of time (playing more up to par) that I'd listen to recordings if there are any of the pieces I play. After a while of doing that and playing those pieces again, I was thinking of recording myself. Then, I'd play it back and try to correct things more. Eventually, I'd post the more 'perfected' recordings as vids to youtube. I don't want to share an actual vid of me playing. I'd probably mess up. It'll be interesting to read the feedback from it. I'll have to filter out the trolls.
I'm also thinking of doing my own vlog on youtube in September. I tried once, but my phone wasn't the best for it. I now have a webcam built into my 'new' computer. (It'll be a year old this October. I think that's still new.) I've never used it, so it'll be something to test out. It should be better. I've always had a weird thing about seeing/hearing myself in media. Even after losing so much weight and having my hair styled the way I want. This might help with that. I'll do an intro vid, then some vids about what some things mean (like aro, ace, etc.), details, and my story with things. Then, either go over topics people ask about or updates on my life. Some ideas for it, at least. I'm thinking of doing it once a week like many youtubers.
I want to be more observant, so I'll try going in steps. Little things at first like, at the very least, lighting the candles/blessings at the start of Shabbos (Friday night). Doing that either before dinner at home, or if I eat out, when I come home. I can have my own services with the siddur or prayer book I have, or follow online streaming ones. The online one I tend to use the most is Central Synagogue in NYC. Might try others in the future, but it's a beautiful building and I like most of their services. They stream them live every Friday night and Saturday morning. So, you know they're consistent. They're archived, too. So, if you miss when they streamed it, you can still catch it. That's handy considering they're 3 hours earlier. Start with doing the Friday night ones every time. Then, add Saturday morning ones. Read the weekly parsha, eventually do Havdallah (the ending ceremony), and more. The siddur I have also has weekday prayers. More observant Jews pray 3 times a day. (Morning, afternoon, and evening.) I might add that, too. They're shorter than the ones for Shabbos. We'll see. I might add in the blessings before and after meals in the distant future, as well. I've just been off and on with Shabbos stuff. Sometimes I'll go for a few months without even lighting the candles. I feel I need to change that. I'll also try to cut my social media time more that day. Eventually, it'll be great if I stayed away completely from it then.
Since I've been immunosuppressed, and my current med works similarly, I've stayed away from going to shul. (Shul is Yiddish for synagogue.) I felt weird about our local ones as it was at the time, anyways. The last High Holiday services I went to, which was just after starting my 1st med for colitis (azathioprine, which is a strong immunosuppressant), I was very sick afterwards. I think that was the last time I went to services. I'm not taking that risk in the future. Even if I did things like put a high-grade hospital mask on and sat as far as I could from people (and told them not to hug me), it wouldn't seem right. There's also still that risk. I feel even more nervous then before when I'm in a very crowded room in general because of it. Before being on immunosuppressants, I only had to handle having agoraphobia, which is bad enough.
I'm going to try and cut down on social media during the rest of the week, too. It's just felt like too much. I still want to stay on top of it, so I'll go through it occasionally. I'll time it in small chunks. I'll always check notifications if I have them, and will post personal stuff like statuses, my blog posts, art, check-ins, etc. the rest of the time. I might go through more of my feeds when I'm waiting for food or something. This will help a lot. It already has a bit this week.
I got my haircut recently. I was hoping to get it dyed at the same appointment, but they didn't have the time. They cut it a little shorter than I expected. I told her shoulder length, and she did it a little shorter. Took off 6" or 7". About 4" or 5" of that was from the 7 months in between. It's been growing faster than it used to. It's falling out a lot more than it used to, as well...Makes it feel a little weird. The bald spots still aren't that visible unless you lift up certain patches of hair. A shorter style is good for the summer, but next time I might say a touch passed the top of my shoulders. They had a 'color consult' at the end. I want to have purple, green, and blue in it. I imagine those colors being a mixture throughout. Hard to describe, I guess. I was able to show them something similar from a Google search in pics. Some call it a mermaid style or oil slick. They'll bleach my hair first, then tone it and add color. Everyone there sounded so excited about it. Even about the concept. Those 3 colors are in the LGBTQ+ flags I'm under. They told me they get a lot of enby clients that get theirs dyed. For many people it's a thing because that's what they can have control over, and may be able to afford more than the medical stuff for transitioning. It'll be my first time, and I wanted something different. Also, the hair loss makes me feel like doing something fun with it for the time being. Getting more of those white hairs, too. Lots of reasons for me, actually. They told me it'll take 4 hours. That'll be interesting. I'm having it done next month.
Monday, May 28, 2018
National Hamburger Day!
Makes sense that today would be Hamburger Day. People usually are having picnics, out grilling/barbecuing, going to the beach, etc. on Memorial Day. It's usually considered the first unofficial day of summer. It's also National Brisket Day. BBQ'd brisket is awesome, and goes along with the summer food theme.
Managed to have my own Friday night Shabbos service. I have a siddur or prayer book that I can follow for Shabbos services. It's an old one, and it's definitely not the best. It's something, though. It has 3 different Friday night services. I closed my door during it and Rosie was not happy. Every few minutes she scratched and meowed at the door begging to be let in. I was surprised by how fast the Friday night one went. It might have been because I was the only one and therefore there was no minyan, but it still seemed odd. Minyan is at least 10 Jewish adults that's required for certain parts of the service. (The Torah can be counted if there are only 9 adults.) For example, if you have less than 10 Jews, you can't have the Torah part of the Shabbos service in the morning. You can certainly study it, though. Even if I wasn't following that, there wasn't much more for Friday night. It ended up being around 30 minutes.
I also did my own Shabbos morning service. This time I left my door open and Rosie joined me. Luckily, she didn't play with my tallit (fringed prayer shawl). Since I essentially skipped half of it, because it was just me, it ended up being about as long as the night one. I might follow along with a synagogue that live-streams their services this coming Shabbos. That'd be nice to do, too.
I did read the parsha (Torah portion) after my Shabbos morning service. I haven't kept up with that for a while. I don't have a Jewish calendar that lists the parshas anymore. I have to look it up online. That doesn't take long. It's just easier when it's right in front of my face...If I were already keeping track, I'd still have to look because there are special Shabbos' that have added parts to read/study. I didn't get to look at commentaries on the parsha, but might do that next time. It's always interesting to look at different interpretations of it.
I didn't get to doing Havdalah (closing ceremony for Shabbos) this time. Hope to next time. It can be somewhat dangerous if I'm the only one. Considering the braided candle for it makes a huge flame. I'm also getting towards the bottom of the one I got from Israel. You're supposed to hold it most of the time. It is cool to watch, though. I like that Mom made a spice box for Havdalah. It's not fancy, but it seems more special that way. I love smelling the spices. It looks cool when we douse the lit candle in grape juice or wine at the end, as well.
Went to World Market yesterday. I always find interesting stuff there. This time I got Black Forest Cake Pudding Bars from the UK, artichoke bruschetta, garlic and herb Jack cheese spread, and red cabbage salad from Poland. Haven't had the 'pudding' bars, and I'm not exactly sure what they are like. They sound good. Might have some for dessert later. The bruschetta and cheese are both great. I had them both in a sandwich with chicken for lunch. They go well together. The cheese wedge servings are huge! Low in calories, too. I don't see myself being able to eat a whole one in one sitting. I thought the salad would be similar to the German rotkohl, but it's unique in its own way. It's not as tart and has a strong cinnamon taste.
I mentioned not too long ago about the 'results' I've been getting while recording it in MyColitis. Pretty much every time I go now it's black. Not a good sign. I'm also getting weird twitching, squeezing, and like a rubber band snapping thing happening in the mid-right section of my abdomen. Most of the time it's just annoying, other times it really hurts. I'm wondering, if I do have an upper GI (gastrointestinal) bleed, that it might be happening in that area. I have to at least tell my primary about this soon. I thought it'd go away on its own, but it's been that color for a while. It's not like I'm constipated, which is pretty much the only other reason for it to be that color. If it was food with black dye, everything that I've eaten for several weeks would have it. I'm actually going more frequently, too.
Another thing I probably should bring up with her is falling asleep while inside any vehicle that's in motion. It doesn't matter if it's a car, ferry, plane, etc. I'll suddenly have a very strong urge to sleep once it's in motion. It's hard to fight it. Sometimes I can do so if someone's talking to me at the same time. However, that doesn't always keep me from falling asleep. I've always been like this, but I think it's getting worse as I age. I don't know what she could do, but it might be worth noting to her. Sometimes, it's actually nice. Especially considering I have such a hard time sleeping normally. I'm wondering if it's particularly bad now, that it might be related to what's going on with my colitis. If it's an internal bleed, I could be becoming anemic. That might make me sleepier. Thus, making it harder to keep myself awake in a car.
Didn't write more of Alliance 3, since I wanted more time to format the paperback of the cookbook. The cookbook's paperback is going to be 6" x 9". About the size of most of my books. The only one that was bigger was the memoir. I thought it'd be a good size, since it's not a very long book. Decided to put the preface after the table of contents for both versions. The paperback's toc is a bit odd. The 'chapters' couldn't all fit on one page. One chapter ended up on the next page. It looks kind of lonely in the middle of the page like that. I suppose it's alright. After copying and pasting a few 'chapters', my computer suddenly decided to crash and go into sleep mode. I panicked, because I wasn't saving as I went. Luckily, Word recovered most of it. It also pissed me off. I would have gotten much further if that hadn't happened. Oh well. I'll do more tomorrow. It'd be cool if I could finish it then.
Finished the adverbs 4 German lesson, and started the abstract objects 3 one. The adverbs lesson was longer than I expected, but I was surprised I finished it in one sitting, and continued to the next one. Missed a couple of the questions/exercises this time.
Read more of +Anima. It seems they're finally going to go over Cooro's background. He was the one that started the little group of +animas. Everyone has had their chance to tell their story, except him. If I remember correctly, the manga started with him being abandoned as a baby and taken in by a church. He was already a +anima. Normally, someone has to be in a life or death situation, and the first animal they see, they take on their characteristics. If they saw a fish; they grow a fish tail, gills, have scales, fins, etc. If they saw a bird; they have wings, feathers cover their body, have talons, and more. They can transform back to their human forms. Cooro is a crow +anima. He seems to be the only one who has never felt awful about being one. I wonder if he was the result of an experiment. Someone wanted to see if one could be born as a +anima. That would be interesting. The church thought he was an angel of death, since he has black wings, but he says they still loved him. When asked why he left, he didn't answer. A friend that Cooro knew back when he was at the church showed up. She became a swallow +anima. Another bird one. He was surprised, because the last time he saw her, she wasn't one.
Along with the regular miscellaneous cleaning for today, I got some more dusting done. I had forgotten to look at a folded up bookcase under my tall dresser. It was absolutely caked with dust. Gross. I dusted my chair, keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, and part of the desk itself. There was a lot of dust on most of these things. My monitor's so much clearer looking. I accidentally tilted it forward a bit, and wasn't sure how to tilt it back at first. It can't bend very much, but it was just slight enough that I noticed it. Next will be my computer, stuff on top of the computer, printer, and the rest of the desk. Should be really nice to see it dust free.
Managed to have my own Friday night Shabbos service. I have a siddur or prayer book that I can follow for Shabbos services. It's an old one, and it's definitely not the best. It's something, though. It has 3 different Friday night services. I closed my door during it and Rosie was not happy. Every few minutes she scratched and meowed at the door begging to be let in. I was surprised by how fast the Friday night one went. It might have been because I was the only one and therefore there was no minyan, but it still seemed odd. Minyan is at least 10 Jewish adults that's required for certain parts of the service. (The Torah can be counted if there are only 9 adults.) For example, if you have less than 10 Jews, you can't have the Torah part of the Shabbos service in the morning. You can certainly study it, though. Even if I wasn't following that, there wasn't much more for Friday night. It ended up being around 30 minutes.
I also did my own Shabbos morning service. This time I left my door open and Rosie joined me. Luckily, she didn't play with my tallit (fringed prayer shawl). Since I essentially skipped half of it, because it was just me, it ended up being about as long as the night one. I might follow along with a synagogue that live-streams their services this coming Shabbos. That'd be nice to do, too.
I did read the parsha (Torah portion) after my Shabbos morning service. I haven't kept up with that for a while. I don't have a Jewish calendar that lists the parshas anymore. I have to look it up online. That doesn't take long. It's just easier when it's right in front of my face...If I were already keeping track, I'd still have to look because there are special Shabbos' that have added parts to read/study. I didn't get to look at commentaries on the parsha, but might do that next time. It's always interesting to look at different interpretations of it.
I didn't get to doing Havdalah (closing ceremony for Shabbos) this time. Hope to next time. It can be somewhat dangerous if I'm the only one. Considering the braided candle for it makes a huge flame. I'm also getting towards the bottom of the one I got from Israel. You're supposed to hold it most of the time. It is cool to watch, though. I like that Mom made a spice box for Havdalah. It's not fancy, but it seems more special that way. I love smelling the spices. It looks cool when we douse the lit candle in grape juice or wine at the end, as well.
Went to World Market yesterday. I always find interesting stuff there. This time I got Black Forest Cake Pudding Bars from the UK, artichoke bruschetta, garlic and herb Jack cheese spread, and red cabbage salad from Poland. Haven't had the 'pudding' bars, and I'm not exactly sure what they are like. They sound good. Might have some for dessert later. The bruschetta and cheese are both great. I had them both in a sandwich with chicken for lunch. They go well together. The cheese wedge servings are huge! Low in calories, too. I don't see myself being able to eat a whole one in one sitting. I thought the salad would be similar to the German rotkohl, but it's unique in its own way. It's not as tart and has a strong cinnamon taste.
I mentioned not too long ago about the 'results' I've been getting while recording it in MyColitis. Pretty much every time I go now it's black. Not a good sign. I'm also getting weird twitching, squeezing, and like a rubber band snapping thing happening in the mid-right section of my abdomen. Most of the time it's just annoying, other times it really hurts. I'm wondering, if I do have an upper GI (gastrointestinal) bleed, that it might be happening in that area. I have to at least tell my primary about this soon. I thought it'd go away on its own, but it's been that color for a while. It's not like I'm constipated, which is pretty much the only other reason for it to be that color. If it was food with black dye, everything that I've eaten for several weeks would have it. I'm actually going more frequently, too.
Another thing I probably should bring up with her is falling asleep while inside any vehicle that's in motion. It doesn't matter if it's a car, ferry, plane, etc. I'll suddenly have a very strong urge to sleep once it's in motion. It's hard to fight it. Sometimes I can do so if someone's talking to me at the same time. However, that doesn't always keep me from falling asleep. I've always been like this, but I think it's getting worse as I age. I don't know what she could do, but it might be worth noting to her. Sometimes, it's actually nice. Especially considering I have such a hard time sleeping normally. I'm wondering if it's particularly bad now, that it might be related to what's going on with my colitis. If it's an internal bleed, I could be becoming anemic. That might make me sleepier. Thus, making it harder to keep myself awake in a car.
Didn't write more of Alliance 3, since I wanted more time to format the paperback of the cookbook. The cookbook's paperback is going to be 6" x 9". About the size of most of my books. The only one that was bigger was the memoir. I thought it'd be a good size, since it's not a very long book. Decided to put the preface after the table of contents for both versions. The paperback's toc is a bit odd. The 'chapters' couldn't all fit on one page. One chapter ended up on the next page. It looks kind of lonely in the middle of the page like that. I suppose it's alright. After copying and pasting a few 'chapters', my computer suddenly decided to crash and go into sleep mode. I panicked, because I wasn't saving as I went. Luckily, Word recovered most of it. It also pissed me off. I would have gotten much further if that hadn't happened. Oh well. I'll do more tomorrow. It'd be cool if I could finish it then.
Finished the adverbs 4 German lesson, and started the abstract objects 3 one. The adverbs lesson was longer than I expected, but I was surprised I finished it in one sitting, and continued to the next one. Missed a couple of the questions/exercises this time.
Read more of +Anima. It seems they're finally going to go over Cooro's background. He was the one that started the little group of +animas. Everyone has had their chance to tell their story, except him. If I remember correctly, the manga started with him being abandoned as a baby and taken in by a church. He was already a +anima. Normally, someone has to be in a life or death situation, and the first animal they see, they take on their characteristics. If they saw a fish; they grow a fish tail, gills, have scales, fins, etc. If they saw a bird; they have wings, feathers cover their body, have talons, and more. They can transform back to their human forms. Cooro is a crow +anima. He seems to be the only one who has never felt awful about being one. I wonder if he was the result of an experiment. Someone wanted to see if one could be born as a +anima. That would be interesting. The church thought he was an angel of death, since he has black wings, but he says they still loved him. When asked why he left, he didn't answer. A friend that Cooro knew back when he was at the church showed up. She became a swallow +anima. Another bird one. He was surprised, because the last time he saw her, she wasn't one.
Along with the regular miscellaneous cleaning for today, I got some more dusting done. I had forgotten to look at a folded up bookcase under my tall dresser. It was absolutely caked with dust. Gross. I dusted my chair, keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor, and part of the desk itself. There was a lot of dust on most of these things. My monitor's so much clearer looking. I accidentally tilted it forward a bit, and wasn't sure how to tilt it back at first. It can't bend very much, but it was just slight enough that I noticed it. Next will be my computer, stuff on top of the computer, printer, and the rest of the desk. Should be really nice to see it dust free.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
National Grandparents Day!
Mood:
Awesome that there's a day for grandparents, too!
It became a national holiday in 1978. It's celebrated on the first Sunday after Labor Day. Apparently, a lot of other countries have their own Grandparents Day. Kind of nice. I only have one grandparent left, and he's amazing!
This reminds me that it's been a while since I last called him...
I think he turns 90 in December. That sounds like quite an accomplishment. It's also 9/11, which is Patriot Day. A day commemorating the attacks back in 2001. I still remember that when it started, I was watching TV just before going to school. The news cut in. Then, the teachers had their TVs on throughout most of the day. Felt saturated with it. It was pretty shocking.
Went to an LGBTQ family picnic yesterday. It was at a park near a lake. It was really nice. Apparently, I had 2 reasons for being there. I normally just think of one of them, which is that I have a trans parent. (I'm also an ally in general of the LGBTQ community.) So, I'm family. Also, I'm ace (or asexual), and they're represented in the longer acronym. So, yay! Double the fun!
It was a reasonable turnout.
There was so much food!
Hot dogs and hamburgers with their fixings with the BBQ part. There were also baked beans, a few different types of salads, a variety of chips, watermelon, skittles, a big sheet cake, mini cinnamon buns, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate chip muffins. The sheet cake had a rainbow and sun design in the middle, and a thick white frosting covering the rest. Had a custard type inner layer. That was really tasty. There was also a variety of drinks. Things like water, juice, sodas, etc. It seemed the organizers, PFLAG, really wanted everyone to be able to have something. They even had veggie burgers. PFLAG originally stood for: Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. They changed it, but kept the name, since nationally they were known by that. They changed the meaning to reflect a more inclusive organization for the entirety of the LGBTQ community. Kind of cool. The change happened 2 years ago, so it's rather new. However, from what I've read, they've always been inclusive to the rest of that community, not just lesbian and gay people.
I ended up talking to someone about being ace while I was there. They wanted to know more about it, said it was very interesting and were happy for me.
Most people haven't heard much about it. I decided to look for ace closed facebook groups a couple of days ago. Found the 'local' meetup group that meets in Seattle's facebook group, a 18+ ace spectrum group, a safe space for aces one, and today found the greater Northwest ace group. The safe space one is more of a support group. They seem to be the most active, although the 18+ one is close. I'm thinking of making my own group on facebook that's based more locally for me. Eventually, if we get enough people interested, we could meet each other in real life.
Make our own 'ace meetup'. I've heard that there are many groups around the world that do this. I'm thinking of bringing this up with the Northwest aces first. I read a recent post about people possibly making groups that are closer to them. Maybe there's already a group, but they haven't publicized it very well. That's totally understandable for safety reasons, though. It'd be interesting to find out. If there isn't they might give advice on how to start a group or something. Maybe even promote it among other aces. Just a thought.
I've been thinking more about my romantic orientation lately.
I posted a while back that I wasn't really sure. Many aces go by romantic orientation for dating and such. I thought I was just heteroromantic. Essentially, finding the opposite sex or gender romantically attractive. So, 'straight' romantically. Now that I've thought about it, I might actually be demi-heteroromantic. Some people just use demiromantic, but when talking specifics they use the regular prefixes like: bi-, hetero-, homo-, pan-, etc. It means I don't develop romantic attraction until I've had a very strong connection or bond with a guy. There's demisexual, which is like this but with sexual attraction. This connection can take years or several months. (And, may never happen. It's very rare.) It's on the aromantic or aro spectrum. I'm not into romance, dating, and such. Although, when that 'connection' is there, I'm really into it. I like it a lot.
This is different than just warming up to someone, or just getting to know them before going out. It's kind of like a switch turns on suddenly, but it's rare. I've only had about 3 or 4 crushes throughout my life. Many people have had a lot more by my age. Some aros call those rare crushes, squishes. Sounds odd to me. I get semi grossed out with overly romantic stuff normally. I find it somewhat fake normally, too. I've only had one boyfriend in the past. About a month before we were in that sort of relationship, I thought we were just really good close friends. He suddenly confessed to me and said if I didn't tell him that I felt the same way within a week, I would never see him again. Being more nervous about losing a friend, I said I loved him too. I don't think I truly felt that way until 4 or 5 months later. Not sure if it was just that I liked the attention (some aros do), it was made up, or I really did fall for him.
It took me a while to feel that feeling though. Haven't really felt it since then. (It was a really nasty breakup.)
It's interesting to find out that there are so many different types of attraction. Especially from the point of view of someone who studied anthropology. Humans are interesting creatures.
My attractions are apparently not aligned, which can lead to confusion. Not confusion about how I feel, just where those fall in society. It's good to know more about myself through it, my views on the world through it, and what I might like in a partner. To me those sound pretty important, too. The person I talked to at the picnic said it was very interesting to learn that there are other attractions. She wanted to learn more about them. Some people who are on both the aro and ace spectrum might identify with a platonic attraction. No one has to, but it is interesting. Platonically or in a friendly way, I might be pan. Meaning, in a friendly way, I really love pretty much everyone. I'm cool with being really good friends with women, men, gender nonconforming people, genderfluid people, etc. It's somewhat interesting since many people feel they can only be friends with people of the same sex. Some think that if you're friends with a member of the opposite sex, it'll eventually lead to a romantic relationship. That sounds silly to me. Some say they can only be friends with the opposite sex, because people of the same one annoy them in some way. This sounds odd to me, as well. I can relate to a lot of other women, since we share a similar experience of just being a woman. There's also aesthetic and sensual attractions. I think I still land in just the hetero category for those. Many people dismiss ace/aro attractions because they think the words are 'made up'. All of those terms have parts that were already words. Guess what? Every word we say/use was 'made up' at one point. It's good to put words to how people have felt all their lives. They can find others that have felt the same way, too. Anyways, so I'm a panplatonic demi-heteroromantic ace.
Just hetero for everything else. I'm a mismatch of things. I'll tell people in a quick way: heteroromantic ace. That kind of erases the demi part, which is pretty important, though. Depending how I feel about the person and where I am, I might tell them that part. I might just say ace, and only go into detail if they ask. It's kind of fun finding these things out.
There's a lot of acephobia out there, too. They say one way to combat that is to just be out about it. Also, to educate people and catch them when they might do/say something inappropriate to an ace. Some aces have felt acephobia from the LGBT community. It's not nearly as common as with the general population, though. The rest of the LGBT community can be just as ignorant. Some aces feel like we should have our own organization, since we've felt shut out at times by the LGBT community, people tend to think of that community as sexual or allo (what some aces refer to sexual people as), and we certainly don't fit into what society views as 'straight'. Even when everything but the sexual orientation is hetero. When people think of straight, they think heterosexual, and that there can't be anything else. I've heard of similar things with the trans community. Personally, I think we do kind of belong in the LGBT community. However, I don't like how sexual it can be perceived from outside. Some aces/aros identify as queer. I'm a little hesitant to use that for myself. Mainly because it's still sometimes used in a derogatory manner, feels like I'm encroaching on someone else's space, etc.
There are also different types of aces. With myself, I think I'm both repulsed and very curious about sex. Kind of like it's a morbid curiosity.
With others, I'm very sex positive. I have no problem with other people doing or not doing sexual things. Whatever makes them happy. If it's sexual things, as long as it's with a consenting adult.
After the local trans support group (I'm an ally of, and my parent created it) Wednesday, my parent and I went to Shari's like usual. No one else showed up. Usually there's at least 4 or 5 other people from the group that go afterwards. Oh well.
I got their apple pie in a jar. I wanted them to give me very little of the ice cream if they had to. They normally squish 3 scoops of vanilla in there. Way too much!
The waitress said she'll try to have it as 3 half scoops. Still felt like too much. I think if I get it in the future, I'm going to outrightly ask for no ice cream in it. Just have the pie and whipped cream on top. Heck, I'd be good with having whipped cream between the layers, if they have to have something. Pretty much more actual pie in the jar, please. When there's too much ice cream, I get headaches and my teeth are very sensitive to the cold. It takes me a while to eat ice cream itself normally. I would love to be able to just scarf it down like I see some people do.
I've always been sensitive to eating cold and some sugary things. So, it's not like there's suddenly something wrong with my teeth. I know one of the main reasons behind putting ice cream in the jar with the pie is to cool it down. It doesn't truly need that. I could wait until it cools down a bit. The whipped cream would help a little.
Managed to attend an online service Friday night. It was from a synagogue in New York City. It was a huge and beautiful sanctuary.
There was a fire in 1998, if I'm remembering correctly on the year, that destroyed that area of the synagogue. In 2001, just after 9/11, they were able to finish rebuilding it, and dedicated it. They had an emotionally filled video shown during part of the service, taking a few minutes to remember the anniversary. Also, had scenes of what was left of the World Trade Center. So, it was in a way honoring that as well. It was a pretty nice service. Felt good to go to some form of one. I'm trying to decide on which synagogue to go with for High Holy Day services. I might do a mix. The reform movement's main site has a listing of synagogues around the country that have live streams of services. It's awesome!
The pain has gotten so bad now that I'm having trouble sleeping.
It's traveled to most of my abdomen and back. Very hard to at least get into a comfortable enough position to sleep. I usually just lay there for hours waiting to pass out. When I actually do pass out, it's late, so I get up later than normal. Maybe my new gastro will help with this. I just have to wait until the 20th...
I've also felt more and more nauseous lately. Sometimes I'm so hungry and nauseous at the same time, I'm not sure if I should eat or not. It's a weird and annoying feeling. Again, she'll probably recommend something for this, too.
Awesome that there's a day for grandparents, too!
It became a national holiday in 1978. It's celebrated on the first Sunday after Labor Day. Apparently, a lot of other countries have their own Grandparents Day. Kind of nice. I only have one grandparent left, and he's amazing!This reminds me that it's been a while since I last called him...I think he turns 90 in December. That sounds like quite an accomplishment. It's also 9/11, which is Patriot Day. A day commemorating the attacks back in 2001. I still remember that when it started, I was watching TV just before going to school. The news cut in. Then, the teachers had their TVs on throughout most of the day. Felt saturated with it. It was pretty shocking.Went to an LGBTQ family picnic yesterday. It was at a park near a lake. It was really nice. Apparently, I had 2 reasons for being there. I normally just think of one of them, which is that I have a trans parent. (I'm also an ally in general of the LGBTQ community.) So, I'm family. Also, I'm ace (or asexual), and they're represented in the longer acronym. So, yay! Double the fun!
It was a reasonable turnout. There was so much food!
Hot dogs and hamburgers with their fixings with the BBQ part. There were also baked beans, a few different types of salads, a variety of chips, watermelon, skittles, a big sheet cake, mini cinnamon buns, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate chip muffins. The sheet cake had a rainbow and sun design in the middle, and a thick white frosting covering the rest. Had a custard type inner layer. That was really tasty. There was also a variety of drinks. Things like water, juice, sodas, etc. It seemed the organizers, PFLAG, really wanted everyone to be able to have something. They even had veggie burgers. PFLAG originally stood for: Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. They changed it, but kept the name, since nationally they were known by that. They changed the meaning to reflect a more inclusive organization for the entirety of the LGBTQ community. Kind of cool. The change happened 2 years ago, so it's rather new. However, from what I've read, they've always been inclusive to the rest of that community, not just lesbian and gay people. I ended up talking to someone about being ace while I was there. They wanted to know more about it, said it was very interesting and were happy for me.
Most people haven't heard much about it. I decided to look for ace closed facebook groups a couple of days ago. Found the 'local' meetup group that meets in Seattle's facebook group, a 18+ ace spectrum group, a safe space for aces one, and today found the greater Northwest ace group. The safe space one is more of a support group. They seem to be the most active, although the 18+ one is close. I'm thinking of making my own group on facebook that's based more locally for me. Eventually, if we get enough people interested, we could meet each other in real life.Make our own 'ace meetup'. I've heard that there are many groups around the world that do this. I'm thinking of bringing this up with the Northwest aces first. I read a recent post about people possibly making groups that are closer to them. Maybe there's already a group, but they haven't publicized it very well. That's totally understandable for safety reasons, though. It'd be interesting to find out. If there isn't they might give advice on how to start a group or something. Maybe even promote it among other aces. Just a thought.I've been thinking more about my romantic orientation lately.
I posted a while back that I wasn't really sure. Many aces go by romantic orientation for dating and such. I thought I was just heteroromantic. Essentially, finding the opposite sex or gender romantically attractive. So, 'straight' romantically. Now that I've thought about it, I might actually be demi-heteroromantic. Some people just use demiromantic, but when talking specifics they use the regular prefixes like: bi-, hetero-, homo-, pan-, etc. It means I don't develop romantic attraction until I've had a very strong connection or bond with a guy. There's demisexual, which is like this but with sexual attraction. This connection can take years or several months. (And, may never happen. It's very rare.) It's on the aromantic or aro spectrum. I'm not into romance, dating, and such. Although, when that 'connection' is there, I'm really into it. I like it a lot.This is different than just warming up to someone, or just getting to know them before going out. It's kind of like a switch turns on suddenly, but it's rare. I've only had about 3 or 4 crushes throughout my life. Many people have had a lot more by my age. Some aros call those rare crushes, squishes. Sounds odd to me. I get semi grossed out with overly romantic stuff normally. I find it somewhat fake normally, too. I've only had one boyfriend in the past. About a month before we were in that sort of relationship, I thought we were just really good close friends. He suddenly confessed to me and said if I didn't tell him that I felt the same way within a week, I would never see him again. Being more nervous about losing a friend, I said I loved him too. I don't think I truly felt that way until 4 or 5 months later. Not sure if it was just that I liked the attention (some aros do), it was made up, or I really did fall for him.It took me a while to feel that feeling though. Haven't really felt it since then. (It was a really nasty breakup.)It's interesting to find out that there are so many different types of attraction. Especially from the point of view of someone who studied anthropology. Humans are interesting creatures.
My attractions are apparently not aligned, which can lead to confusion. Not confusion about how I feel, just where those fall in society. It's good to know more about myself through it, my views on the world through it, and what I might like in a partner. To me those sound pretty important, too. The person I talked to at the picnic said it was very interesting to learn that there are other attractions. She wanted to learn more about them. Some people who are on both the aro and ace spectrum might identify with a platonic attraction. No one has to, but it is interesting. Platonically or in a friendly way, I might be pan. Meaning, in a friendly way, I really love pretty much everyone. I'm cool with being really good friends with women, men, gender nonconforming people, genderfluid people, etc. It's somewhat interesting since many people feel they can only be friends with people of the same sex. Some think that if you're friends with a member of the opposite sex, it'll eventually lead to a romantic relationship. That sounds silly to me. Some say they can only be friends with the opposite sex, because people of the same one annoy them in some way. This sounds odd to me, as well. I can relate to a lot of other women, since we share a similar experience of just being a woman. There's also aesthetic and sensual attractions. I think I still land in just the hetero category for those. Many people dismiss ace/aro attractions because they think the words are 'made up'. All of those terms have parts that were already words. Guess what? Every word we say/use was 'made up' at one point. It's good to put words to how people have felt all their lives. They can find others that have felt the same way, too. Anyways, so I'm a panplatonic demi-heteroromantic ace.Just hetero for everything else. I'm a mismatch of things. I'll tell people in a quick way: heteroromantic ace. That kind of erases the demi part, which is pretty important, though. Depending how I feel about the person and where I am, I might tell them that part. I might just say ace, and only go into detail if they ask. It's kind of fun finding these things out. There's a lot of acephobia out there, too. They say one way to combat that is to just be out about it. Also, to educate people and catch them when they might do/say something inappropriate to an ace. Some aces have felt acephobia from the LGBT community. It's not nearly as common as with the general population, though. The rest of the LGBT community can be just as ignorant. Some aces feel like we should have our own organization, since we've felt shut out at times by the LGBT community, people tend to think of that community as sexual or allo (what some aces refer to sexual people as), and we certainly don't fit into what society views as 'straight'. Even when everything but the sexual orientation is hetero. When people think of straight, they think heterosexual, and that there can't be anything else. I've heard of similar things with the trans community. Personally, I think we do kind of belong in the LGBT community. However, I don't like how sexual it can be perceived from outside. Some aces/aros identify as queer. I'm a little hesitant to use that for myself. Mainly because it's still sometimes used in a derogatory manner, feels like I'm encroaching on someone else's space, etc.
There are also different types of aces. With myself, I think I'm both repulsed and very curious about sex. Kind of like it's a morbid curiosity.
With others, I'm very sex positive. I have no problem with other people doing or not doing sexual things. Whatever makes them happy. If it's sexual things, as long as it's with a consenting adult. After the local trans support group (I'm an ally of, and my parent created it) Wednesday, my parent and I went to Shari's like usual. No one else showed up. Usually there's at least 4 or 5 other people from the group that go afterwards. Oh well.
I got their apple pie in a jar. I wanted them to give me very little of the ice cream if they had to. They normally squish 3 scoops of vanilla in there. Way too much!The waitress said she'll try to have it as 3 half scoops. Still felt like too much. I think if I get it in the future, I'm going to outrightly ask for no ice cream in it. Just have the pie and whipped cream on top. Heck, I'd be good with having whipped cream between the layers, if they have to have something. Pretty much more actual pie in the jar, please. When there's too much ice cream, I get headaches and my teeth are very sensitive to the cold. It takes me a while to eat ice cream itself normally. I would love to be able to just scarf it down like I see some people do.I've always been sensitive to eating cold and some sugary things. So, it's not like there's suddenly something wrong with my teeth. I know one of the main reasons behind putting ice cream in the jar with the pie is to cool it down. It doesn't truly need that. I could wait until it cools down a bit. The whipped cream would help a little. Managed to attend an online service Friday night. It was from a synagogue in New York City. It was a huge and beautiful sanctuary.
There was a fire in 1998, if I'm remembering correctly on the year, that destroyed that area of the synagogue. In 2001, just after 9/11, they were able to finish rebuilding it, and dedicated it. They had an emotionally filled video shown during part of the service, taking a few minutes to remember the anniversary. Also, had scenes of what was left of the World Trade Center. So, it was in a way honoring that as well. It was a pretty nice service. Felt good to go to some form of one. I'm trying to decide on which synagogue to go with for High Holy Day services. I might do a mix. The reform movement's main site has a listing of synagogues around the country that have live streams of services. It's awesome! The pain has gotten so bad now that I'm having trouble sleeping.
It's traveled to most of my abdomen and back. Very hard to at least get into a comfortable enough position to sleep. I usually just lay there for hours waiting to pass out. When I actually do pass out, it's late, so I get up later than normal. Maybe my new gastro will help with this. I just have to wait until the 20th...I've also felt more and more nauseous lately. Sometimes I'm so hungry and nauseous at the same time, I'm not sure if I should eat or not. It's a weird and annoying feeling. Again, she'll probably recommend something for this, too.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Tu B'Shevat 5776
Mood:
The holiday starts tonight, and ends tomorrow night. 'Tu' stands for 2 Hebrew letters that add up to 15. (Gematria is a numerology based on Hebrew letters. Certain meanings can be derived from it.) It falls on the 15th of the month of Shevat. (That's where the 'Tu' comes from.) 5776 is the year we're in on the Jewish calendar. It's also known as the New Year of the Trees. People celebrate it by eating fruits and nuts, planting trees, and having special seders. Seder lit. means 'order', but is also a special ritual meal. You go through symbolic foods/drinks in order. Many people are familiar with the Passover seder. For this one, you go through the seasons, try at least a certain amount of fruits/nuts from certain categories, drink at least 4 cups of wine (or juice, if you're like me), etc. Basically showing appreciation of nature.
This seder has its roots in Kabbalah and it's having a pretty recent revival. Many people refer to this holiday as the Jewish Arbor Day.
Started tapering down the prednisone last Thursday. I was feeling more and more antsy or jittery, and very sleepy. Sometimes at the same time. Which is a weird feeling. That's gotten a bit better since I went down a pill. My nausea is a lot better, and most of the time it doesn't pop up. I think it's mostly when I eat too fast, now. I still occasionally have joint pain. Not as bad as before, though. I still feel a strange pain in my chest. The same one since I started taking it. I don't think it's a really big thing, and maybe that will go down as I taper more off of it, too. It might have to do with my stomach. I don't know.
They did say it can cause stomach pain, but I'm not used to this kind. I have felt a weird muscle pain. I'm not sure how to describe it.
I thought one of the times it felt really bad, my upper right thigh was cramping up horribly. No amount of movement changed it. Lasted for a while. It didn't really have a 'piercing' sort of pain, like I would have with cramps. It felt deeper and like it was searing. I've been getting similar pain more often in my upper right arm. Not as intense. I usually notice it before going to bed. I've read that it might affect people's muscles. So, I guess I'll just have to see what happens over time. Also, as I went down a pill, I noticed that I'm getting more headaches. Took me a while to fall asleep last night, because it just wouldn't ease up.
My gastroenterologist wanted me to schedule an actual physical appointment with her for in a couple of weeks. I say physical, because all the appointments since the end of July have been over the phone. It's a trek to get over to that clinic. So, I thought I might try to make one for the beginning of next month, and called them. They said the closest available appointment would be in mid-March. She's apparently very popular.
It's quite a ways out, so they said they'd confer with her nurses to see if there could be a closer date. A couple hours later I got a voicemail from them. They said they made an appointment time for me on January 25th. At least a couple of things wrong with this.
First, they made my appointment for me, and told me I had to confirm it. I wasn't sure if they threw out the other appointment I had made. They could have just suggested the date, or said call us back we might have a better time. Also, this would make it earlier than even my gastro wanted it to be. So, I called back. The person on the other end was very apologetic, and switched the appointment date to the same March one again. Not sure how my gastro's going to take it. She might be used to that sort of thing anyways. Especially with how popular she seems.
I have a few things that I might want to bring up while I'm there. It might just be easier in person with some of it. I noticed for a while after I lost so much weight, that my abdomen/belly is going down at a slower rate than everything else. This scared me at first, knowing about Mom's abdominal tumor. I know it wasn't the same, but still scared me.
The sit-ups have been helping a bit. Another sign it's not what she had. I noticed about a week ago, that when I turn to the side and look in a mirror, my spine seems to do a weird 's' thing. (Or, something similar.) I never had problems with scoliosis as a kid. We were tested each year, and I was fine every time. But, right where I see the most 'belly' or thicker part, my spine seems to be a lot more concave. I'm actually getting partially defined abs, because of all the sit-ups. So, it was interesting to see. It almost seems like my spine is pushing that stuff out, and making it appear that I have more of a belly than I do. Finding this out at first, I thought it was very interesting, and almost reassuring in a way. But, once I thought about it more, it seems like it sounds a bit serious. I've heard that IBD can mess with your bones in general, possibly stripping away nutrients from it. They can become more brittle this way, too. Some meds for it can actually dissolve bone. So, this got me a bit more worried. I'll bring this up then. It might not be a big deal, but at least she might look into it.
Another thing I want to bring up: do I really have Crohn's or do I have Ulcerative Colitis? Everything seems to point to Crohn's, including the colonoscopy/endoscopy. Except for that one IBD blood test that indicated I had UC. She told me that test can be inaccurate or produce false positives. So, I want to know for sure.
I know that there can be Crohn's that just affects the colon, and UC only affects the colon. The only difference with these, really, is that one (Crohn's) affects more layers of it than the other. Also, Crohn's might be in more patches, rather than one section. If someone with UC has their colon taken out, they're a lot more likely to stay in remission for the rest of their lives. With Crohn's, it might travel, and slow the progression of the disease. This is at least what I've learned so far. According to the colonoscopy/endoscopy, my stomach and part of my duodenum were slightly affected as well. (Not nearly as much as my colon.) This would be more of an indicator of Crohn's. A lot of the treatments are the same, at least. I just would like a more definitive feel/answer for it. Might not get one, but I at least want to try and see. I might ask for a barium x-ray (I think) of my small intestines. Sometimes that helps with narrowing it down. They can't get to the small intestines with the colonoscopy/endoscopy. They can pretty much get to everywhere but that. Or, she may bring up that type of thing herself at the appointment. That might be partly why she wanted to see me in person, too.
So, I don't know.
I finished figuring out descriptions for my nightmare anthology of short stories, Sweet Endless Terror. I realized I wanted to have more of the description down before I sent it off to be published. I'm actually getting pretty excited about it. Just the idea that I'm going to publish a 2nd book is pretty cool to me!
It might take a while for it to be fully approved by both review phases. The first one doesn't take long, and it converts the book into multiple ebook formats. I think they dub it the 'meat grinder'. After it passes that, it's available through the Smashwords catalog. The second phase is manual and more in depth. After it's approved through that (it usually takes a couple of weeks for new books), it goes into their 'premium' catalog and gets distributed almost everywhere. Like I mentioned before, I'm thinking of having it as a pre-order first before it goes 'live'. They go through the review processes slightly differently, but you still have to be approved by both in the end. So, I'll see how that goes.
For Shabbat, I did the same thing I did last time. I stayed off of electronics, and started/ended it on time. It still felt good.
Kind of refreshing in many ways. I read about a third of Sanctuary by Faye Kellerman, Friday night. It's a much thicker book than the last one I read from the series. I just started it that night. It's really good, and I didn't want to stop reading it, but I started to get really sleepy at a certain point.
I like this one more than the last one, too. The killer's identity is a lot more hidden, and you don't know what they're thinking. With the last one, Day of Atonement, they kept going back and forth between the detectives/family's perspective, and the killer's/kidnapped kid's perspective. It was slightly annoying at times.
This one's a lot more straightforward, and it feels like there's more mystery this way. So far a wealthy family of 4 went missing. The mother and father had been found, and were killed and buried in the mountains close to home. The 2 sons are still missing. Something seemed off about the home, too. Another family, don't know if they are related with the current case, decided to stay with Peter and Rina. (Peter's the main detective in the series, and Rina's his wife. She occasionally helps out. Especially when it involves the orthodox Jewish community.) It was a mom and her 5 kids. They were trying to take a vacation away from the dad, since he was acting strangely. The dad was a diamond dealer. Same as the father in the current case. He was killed near his home, and stuffed in a locker. As soon as Peter heard about this the mom and kids disappeared. The car they had rented had stopped on a freeway, and had slashed tires. There was no one inside when Peter investigated. It's interesting that it might be related. I hope they're not dead, too.
It was also a special Shabbat called: Shabbat Shirah or Shabbat of Song. Both the Torah and Haftarah portions have songs in them. The Torah one looks really interesting in the actual scroll. It's stylized a bit more with wide spaces in between each line. This one's the song sung by the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea, and the Egyptians drowning in it. The Haftarah one has the Song of Deborah. Both of these are pretty violent. In the Passover seder, when we're going over the story, it's bittersweet when the Egyptians are defeated. Basically happy that we're free, but disturbed that anyone died. But, in this part of the Torah, there seemed to be no sorrowful response to it. Maybe the rabbis elaborated on it for the seder. Or, maybe that comes up later...
The Deborah one was just very blunt. Some people observe Shabbat Shirah by singing more songs, and playing tambourines.
Read and studied from the Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides. Maimonides is always interesting, but the type with this book is really small. Might need a magnifying glass next time...
The first part was on the concept that we're made in the image of G-d. It's not that we physically look like him. I tend to refer to G-d as him, because I'm used to it. But, many refer to him as her, as well. Some have other pronouns. Just depends on how people want to refer to him. According to Maimonides, it's our intellect. We have the ability to create, think, study the world, etc. That's how we're alike. I've always liked that idea, too.
Havdalah was a bit easier this time.
Might be because I'm getting more used to doing it on my own. I'm noticing that the candle burns up pretty quickly. Not exactly surprising, considering it has multiple wicks. A bit sad, because I got it in Israel.
At least it's being used now.
I started the 2nd season of Haikyuu on Friday. Interesting start so far. Also, the 2nd season of Ansatsu Kyoushitsu or Assassination Classroom started recently. It was really good during its first season. Started watching a brand new anime a couple of weeks ago called Divine Gate. It looks promising. A bit much all at once right now, though. (Kind of similar to Kekkai Sensen that way. They hit you with a bunch of things, and then you understand more as you go along.) Fairy Tail started a new arc called Fairy Tail Zero. It's about the beginning of the guild, Fairy Tail. I like the founder, Mavis, a lot. She's very intelligent, unique, positive, had a horrible childhood, believes in fairies, tends to not wear shoes, looks ethereal, tough, and more. She spent a good chunk of her life virtually alone, except for one friend, on in island. So far this arc has been interesting, too. The current Shogun arc in Gintama has been amazing!
Really high quality, awesome fights, nice and short flashbacks, very touching, the humor is still there (although toned down a bit), lots of surprises, and more. It seems to be one of their best arcs so far. I think it'll end during the next episode. Should be interesting to see what happens with it afterwards.
Started a manga called 6 no Trigger, or Trigger of 6 on Monday. (Some translate it to 6 Trigger.) It has a very interesting concept behind it, but has been violent, too. Some of the violent ones can be good. As long as there's a reason behind it. This one's about an assassin, named Tsubame, who shares his body with 3 other people. They switch control of him by switching to different mechanical arms. His appearance changes with each one, too. One of them is a quiet little kid named Penguin, who has amazing sniper skills. Another one's named Washi, and he has a huge gattling gun crafted to his shoulder to mow down his enemies. And, the last one's a woman named Suzume who wields dual pistols. Tsubame prefers rifles and martial arts. Should be interesting to find out how Tsubame got that way. It's a relatively short manga, but should still be interesting.
Started the manga, Asklepios on Friday. It seems interesting, too. An order has been sent out to hunt down the existence of an Asklepios, a Greek demon G-d of medicine, whom the Church believes is practicing unorthodox methods. Buzz is the head of a family of doctors (I think he's the last one), and the Church believes his family are those demons. So, he's gone into hiding, and has helped people silently along the way. Every time he helps people they sing his praises, and he immediately runs away. He thinks the Church is always out to get him, so he wants to keep a very low profile. He's terrified of the officers that are sent by them to the towns he's stayed at. He also refused to do surgery until someone showed up to protect him, and got shot. She wants him to become more visible, and boldly help as many people as he can. Apparently his family has interesting medical abilities. They can monitor people's vital signs just by looking at them. Buzz seems very skittish, but that's to be expected. This one also seems to be short.
Also, went to a town hall meeting about the trees that were being torn done in the greenbelt behind us. It was more like a demonstration/q and a thing. A few charts displayed with people to explain, a huge layout of the roads for the neighborhood and area, many officials around those explaining things, and people asked them questions and voiced their concerns. Interesting to see the house blown up like it was, to have a better view of what's behind us, and to see what they plan to do. The mayor was there and talked a bit to us. She had similar concerns. She couldn't be apart of the project, because she lived within the area. But, she can relay concerns, suggest things, etc. now. They do plan to tear down all of the greenbelt behind us. There's going to be a straight long road behind it. The mayor said she'll suggest that they put a fence up on the side that faces the new road. Beyond that road, in the future, there's going to be a new development. They said it'll take a few years for the project to finish. A lot of people seemed concerned about it. Many thought it was inevitable, but still find something wrong with it. Some are concerned they'll end up being flooded. The wood piles that I thought they were going to burn last week, are being turned into mulch instead. That's a lot better for everyone. I wonder if they'd be giving some of it away to the neighborhood? There were also about 4 different kinds of cookies, and water bottles at the meeting. So, yay! Calm people down with cookies and water.
I got to playing my clarinet this past week, too. Felt good to get back to it. I'm getting closer to finishing the original character expression meme of Junko, from my first novel. Studied a couple more kanji and their compounds. Translated more of the You Maga article. This time it's about what parents should make for school lunches, if anything.
The holiday starts tonight, and ends tomorrow night. 'Tu' stands for 2 Hebrew letters that add up to 15. (Gematria is a numerology based on Hebrew letters. Certain meanings can be derived from it.) It falls on the 15th of the month of Shevat. (That's where the 'Tu' comes from.) 5776 is the year we're in on the Jewish calendar. It's also known as the New Year of the Trees. People celebrate it by eating fruits and nuts, planting trees, and having special seders. Seder lit. means 'order', but is also a special ritual meal. You go through symbolic foods/drinks in order. Many people are familiar with the Passover seder. For this one, you go through the seasons, try at least a certain amount of fruits/nuts from certain categories, drink at least 4 cups of wine (or juice, if you're like me), etc. Basically showing appreciation of nature.
This seder has its roots in Kabbalah and it's having a pretty recent revival. Many people refer to this holiday as the Jewish Arbor Day.Started tapering down the prednisone last Thursday. I was feeling more and more antsy or jittery, and very sleepy. Sometimes at the same time. Which is a weird feeling. That's gotten a bit better since I went down a pill. My nausea is a lot better, and most of the time it doesn't pop up. I think it's mostly when I eat too fast, now. I still occasionally have joint pain. Not as bad as before, though. I still feel a strange pain in my chest. The same one since I started taking it. I don't think it's a really big thing, and maybe that will go down as I taper more off of it, too. It might have to do with my stomach. I don't know.
They did say it can cause stomach pain, but I'm not used to this kind. I have felt a weird muscle pain. I'm not sure how to describe it.I thought one of the times it felt really bad, my upper right thigh was cramping up horribly. No amount of movement changed it. Lasted for a while. It didn't really have a 'piercing' sort of pain, like I would have with cramps. It felt deeper and like it was searing. I've been getting similar pain more often in my upper right arm. Not as intense. I usually notice it before going to bed. I've read that it might affect people's muscles. So, I guess I'll just have to see what happens over time. Also, as I went down a pill, I noticed that I'm getting more headaches. Took me a while to fall asleep last night, because it just wouldn't ease up.My gastroenterologist wanted me to schedule an actual physical appointment with her for in a couple of weeks. I say physical, because all the appointments since the end of July have been over the phone. It's a trek to get over to that clinic. So, I thought I might try to make one for the beginning of next month, and called them. They said the closest available appointment would be in mid-March. She's apparently very popular.
It's quite a ways out, so they said they'd confer with her nurses to see if there could be a closer date. A couple hours later I got a voicemail from them. They said they made an appointment time for me on January 25th. At least a couple of things wrong with this.First, they made my appointment for me, and told me I had to confirm it. I wasn't sure if they threw out the other appointment I had made. They could have just suggested the date, or said call us back we might have a better time. Also, this would make it earlier than even my gastro wanted it to be. So, I called back. The person on the other end was very apologetic, and switched the appointment date to the same March one again. Not sure how my gastro's going to take it. She might be used to that sort of thing anyways. Especially with how popular she seems. I have a few things that I might want to bring up while I'm there. It might just be easier in person with some of it. I noticed for a while after I lost so much weight, that my abdomen/belly is going down at a slower rate than everything else. This scared me at first, knowing about Mom's abdominal tumor. I know it wasn't the same, but still scared me.
The sit-ups have been helping a bit. Another sign it's not what she had. I noticed about a week ago, that when I turn to the side and look in a mirror, my spine seems to do a weird 's' thing. (Or, something similar.) I never had problems with scoliosis as a kid. We were tested each year, and I was fine every time. But, right where I see the most 'belly' or thicker part, my spine seems to be a lot more concave. I'm actually getting partially defined abs, because of all the sit-ups. So, it was interesting to see. It almost seems like my spine is pushing that stuff out, and making it appear that I have more of a belly than I do. Finding this out at first, I thought it was very interesting, and almost reassuring in a way. But, once I thought about it more, it seems like it sounds a bit serious. I've heard that IBD can mess with your bones in general, possibly stripping away nutrients from it. They can become more brittle this way, too. Some meds for it can actually dissolve bone. So, this got me a bit more worried. I'll bring this up then. It might not be a big deal, but at least she might look into it. Another thing I want to bring up: do I really have Crohn's or do I have Ulcerative Colitis? Everything seems to point to Crohn's, including the colonoscopy/endoscopy. Except for that one IBD blood test that indicated I had UC. She told me that test can be inaccurate or produce false positives. So, I want to know for sure.
I know that there can be Crohn's that just affects the colon, and UC only affects the colon. The only difference with these, really, is that one (Crohn's) affects more layers of it than the other. Also, Crohn's might be in more patches, rather than one section. If someone with UC has their colon taken out, they're a lot more likely to stay in remission for the rest of their lives. With Crohn's, it might travel, and slow the progression of the disease. This is at least what I've learned so far. According to the colonoscopy/endoscopy, my stomach and part of my duodenum were slightly affected as well. (Not nearly as much as my colon.) This would be more of an indicator of Crohn's. A lot of the treatments are the same, at least. I just would like a more definitive feel/answer for it. Might not get one, but I at least want to try and see. I might ask for a barium x-ray (I think) of my small intestines. Sometimes that helps with narrowing it down. They can't get to the small intestines with the colonoscopy/endoscopy. They can pretty much get to everywhere but that. Or, she may bring up that type of thing herself at the appointment. That might be partly why she wanted to see me in person, too.So, I don't know. I finished figuring out descriptions for my nightmare anthology of short stories, Sweet Endless Terror. I realized I wanted to have more of the description down before I sent it off to be published. I'm actually getting pretty excited about it. Just the idea that I'm going to publish a 2nd book is pretty cool to me!
It might take a while for it to be fully approved by both review phases. The first one doesn't take long, and it converts the book into multiple ebook formats. I think they dub it the 'meat grinder'. After it passes that, it's available through the Smashwords catalog. The second phase is manual and more in depth. After it's approved through that (it usually takes a couple of weeks for new books), it goes into their 'premium' catalog and gets distributed almost everywhere. Like I mentioned before, I'm thinking of having it as a pre-order first before it goes 'live'. They go through the review processes slightly differently, but you still have to be approved by both in the end. So, I'll see how that goes. For Shabbat, I did the same thing I did last time. I stayed off of electronics, and started/ended it on time. It still felt good.
Kind of refreshing in many ways. I read about a third of Sanctuary by Faye Kellerman, Friday night. It's a much thicker book than the last one I read from the series. I just started it that night. It's really good, and I didn't want to stop reading it, but I started to get really sleepy at a certain point.I like this one more than the last one, too. The killer's identity is a lot more hidden, and you don't know what they're thinking. With the last one, Day of Atonement, they kept going back and forth between the detectives/family's perspective, and the killer's/kidnapped kid's perspective. It was slightly annoying at times.This one's a lot more straightforward, and it feels like there's more mystery this way. So far a wealthy family of 4 went missing. The mother and father had been found, and were killed and buried in the mountains close to home. The 2 sons are still missing. Something seemed off about the home, too. Another family, don't know if they are related with the current case, decided to stay with Peter and Rina. (Peter's the main detective in the series, and Rina's his wife. She occasionally helps out. Especially when it involves the orthodox Jewish community.) It was a mom and her 5 kids. They were trying to take a vacation away from the dad, since he was acting strangely. The dad was a diamond dealer. Same as the father in the current case. He was killed near his home, and stuffed in a locker. As soon as Peter heard about this the mom and kids disappeared. The car they had rented had stopped on a freeway, and had slashed tires. There was no one inside when Peter investigated. It's interesting that it might be related. I hope they're not dead, too. It was also a special Shabbat called: Shabbat Shirah or Shabbat of Song. Both the Torah and Haftarah portions have songs in them. The Torah one looks really interesting in the actual scroll. It's stylized a bit more with wide spaces in between each line. This one's the song sung by the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea, and the Egyptians drowning in it. The Haftarah one has the Song of Deborah. Both of these are pretty violent. In the Passover seder, when we're going over the story, it's bittersweet when the Egyptians are defeated. Basically happy that we're free, but disturbed that anyone died. But, in this part of the Torah, there seemed to be no sorrowful response to it. Maybe the rabbis elaborated on it for the seder. Or, maybe that comes up later...
The Deborah one was just very blunt. Some people observe Shabbat Shirah by singing more songs, and playing tambourines. Read and studied from the Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides. Maimonides is always interesting, but the type with this book is really small. Might need a magnifying glass next time...
The first part was on the concept that we're made in the image of G-d. It's not that we physically look like him. I tend to refer to G-d as him, because I'm used to it. But, many refer to him as her, as well. Some have other pronouns. Just depends on how people want to refer to him. According to Maimonides, it's our intellect. We have the ability to create, think, study the world, etc. That's how we're alike. I've always liked that idea, too. Havdalah was a bit easier this time.
Might be because I'm getting more used to doing it on my own. I'm noticing that the candle burns up pretty quickly. Not exactly surprising, considering it has multiple wicks. A bit sad, because I got it in Israel.At least it's being used now. I started the 2nd season of Haikyuu on Friday. Interesting start so far. Also, the 2nd season of Ansatsu Kyoushitsu or Assassination Classroom started recently. It was really good during its first season. Started watching a brand new anime a couple of weeks ago called Divine Gate. It looks promising. A bit much all at once right now, though. (Kind of similar to Kekkai Sensen that way. They hit you with a bunch of things, and then you understand more as you go along.) Fairy Tail started a new arc called Fairy Tail Zero. It's about the beginning of the guild, Fairy Tail. I like the founder, Mavis, a lot. She's very intelligent, unique, positive, had a horrible childhood, believes in fairies, tends to not wear shoes, looks ethereal, tough, and more. She spent a good chunk of her life virtually alone, except for one friend, on in island. So far this arc has been interesting, too. The current Shogun arc in Gintama has been amazing!
Really high quality, awesome fights, nice and short flashbacks, very touching, the humor is still there (although toned down a bit), lots of surprises, and more. It seems to be one of their best arcs so far. I think it'll end during the next episode. Should be interesting to see what happens with it afterwards.Started a manga called 6 no Trigger, or Trigger of 6 on Monday. (Some translate it to 6 Trigger.) It has a very interesting concept behind it, but has been violent, too. Some of the violent ones can be good. As long as there's a reason behind it. This one's about an assassin, named Tsubame, who shares his body with 3 other people. They switch control of him by switching to different mechanical arms. His appearance changes with each one, too. One of them is a quiet little kid named Penguin, who has amazing sniper skills. Another one's named Washi, and he has a huge gattling gun crafted to his shoulder to mow down his enemies. And, the last one's a woman named Suzume who wields dual pistols. Tsubame prefers rifles and martial arts. Should be interesting to find out how Tsubame got that way. It's a relatively short manga, but should still be interesting.
Started the manga, Asklepios on Friday. It seems interesting, too. An order has been sent out to hunt down the existence of an Asklepios, a Greek demon G-d of medicine, whom the Church believes is practicing unorthodox methods. Buzz is the head of a family of doctors (I think he's the last one), and the Church believes his family are those demons. So, he's gone into hiding, and has helped people silently along the way. Every time he helps people they sing his praises, and he immediately runs away. He thinks the Church is always out to get him, so he wants to keep a very low profile. He's terrified of the officers that are sent by them to the towns he's stayed at. He also refused to do surgery until someone showed up to protect him, and got shot. She wants him to become more visible, and boldly help as many people as he can. Apparently his family has interesting medical abilities. They can monitor people's vital signs just by looking at them. Buzz seems very skittish, but that's to be expected. This one also seems to be short.
Also, went to a town hall meeting about the trees that were being torn done in the greenbelt behind us. It was more like a demonstration/q and a thing. A few charts displayed with people to explain, a huge layout of the roads for the neighborhood and area, many officials around those explaining things, and people asked them questions and voiced their concerns. Interesting to see the house blown up like it was, to have a better view of what's behind us, and to see what they plan to do. The mayor was there and talked a bit to us. She had similar concerns. She couldn't be apart of the project, because she lived within the area. But, she can relay concerns, suggest things, etc. now. They do plan to tear down all of the greenbelt behind us. There's going to be a straight long road behind it. The mayor said she'll suggest that they put a fence up on the side that faces the new road. Beyond that road, in the future, there's going to be a new development. They said it'll take a few years for the project to finish. A lot of people seemed concerned about it. Many thought it was inevitable, but still find something wrong with it. Some are concerned they'll end up being flooded. The wood piles that I thought they were going to burn last week, are being turned into mulch instead. That's a lot better for everyone. I wonder if they'd be giving some of it away to the neighborhood? There were also about 4 different kinds of cookies, and water bottles at the meeting. So, yay! Calm people down with cookies and water.
I got to playing my clarinet this past week, too. Felt good to get back to it. I'm getting closer to finishing the original character expression meme of Junko, from my first novel. Studied a couple more kanji and their compounds. Translated more of the You Maga article. This time it's about what parents should make for school lunches, if anything.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Kimi wa Dare wo Mamotte Iru (Strings Version)
Mood:
Or: Who Are You Protecting. This is from the first Rurouni Kenshin OST. I featured the original version a while back. So, why not this one? There's also an acoustic version, electric guitar version, and a 'hard' version. The original and the strings versions seem the best to me. This is one of Kenshin's character themes. All of the different versions for this fits him really well. I finished the anime a while back.
Started watching the 1st live-action movie version of Rurouni Kenshin today. I'm about a quarter of the way through, but it's already much better than I expected.(It's a little over 2 hours long. Didn't really want to sit through the whole thing at once.) It really does translate over to the 'real world' well. The fights have been a bit dramatic, like the anime, but well done. The actors have been spot on so far. The one who plays Kenshin would seem to have the toughest role. Considering he has a split personality. Also read that the actor that plays him did all of his own stunts. He has the vocal quirks down, too. Interesting considering the original voice actress that voiced him made him sound so unique. Not sure if I like the way Yahiko looks, but I've only seen him in one scene so far. Very briefly. They changed the plot a bit, too. But, that kind of thing makes it more interesting. Also, read that the original mangaka (manga creator) loved it. That's a good sign. The music is really good, too. The cinematography is gorgeous at times.
There are 2 more live-action movies for it. All of them seem to have good reviews. I might watch them slowly in order.
I started prednisone last Thursday. I'm having some strange side effects, but nothing really big or life-threatening.Also, those side effects change depending on how long its been since I took the dose. Right away I feel sleepy. Then, a little while later, I feel like something really heavy is weighing down on my shoulders and chest. A little after that, I seem to have a semi-energy boost (not much...), and a warm feeling. Then, I feel antsy and there's a weird pain in my chest. Sometimes I've felt very frustrated at that time. Then, I become relaxed and sleepy. It's a weird whirlwind of side effects. But, I have noticed that my joints seem to be feeling better. I'm not as nauseous, but that might be because of decreasing my azathioprine dose. I've decreased my balsalazide dose as well. Feels nicer just to take 1 dose a day now. 3 huge pills is better than the 6 a day. (Right after my colonoscopy, it was 9 of those huge pills a day...
)
So far I've gotten 8 test results back from my blood draw. I don't really know how many there will be, or if these are all I'll get back. My sed rate is better than last time. It's 30 instead of 34. Sed rate shows how much inflammation there is, and can be indicative of remission. 0-22mm/hr is the normal range. My highest was 44 back at the end of June. I was slowly going down into normal range, and then it suddenly increased last time. Not by much, but it was the first time that it started to go back up. I'm glad it's on the decline, again. Really good sign.Hope it continues to go down. Had a test result for tuberculosis for the first time. It came back negative. That's a good thing. I think they have to test for it before you take prednisone. Everything else came back normal. Although, a few of the test results were the highest I've ever had before on, I think, the 'general panel'. They were the highest I've ever had them last time, too. They're just barely still within normal range. I'm a little nervous about that.Especially considering that's not truly my norm for them. (My actual norm, where I hover around usually, might be different than the general population's norm.) I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on those.
For Shabbat, I did 'unplug', and tried to start and end it on time. It was a really nice relaxing, yet refreshing, experience.I was only a few minutes off with starting it, but it was still before sunset. A lot more 'on time' than I normally would do it. I finished it exactly on time. I got in as much time with my electronics beforehand, and cleaned up as much as I could, too. I don't normally get to cleaning the dining room table beforehand, so that was good. I was a little late with starting, since we were still at the grocery store. I think if the candles are lit within that 18 minute time period, it's pretty much still on time. That's 18 minutes before sunset. I also made sure my computer was off beforehand, my phone was somewhere away from me, put my mp3 player out of sight, etc. That I think helped a lot. It felt like a completely different atmosphere.
I thought I would get bored without electronics during that time. So, I looked online to get some ideas for what to do beforehand. There were a few that got me a little more inspired about it. I already had some ideas, but it was good to see what others might do. I wrote a lot of ideas down, but interestingly I didn't get to everything. I, of course, wanted to do my own Friday night service, Saturday morning service, afternoon service, and a Havdalah service. I thought that would still leave quite a bit of time left. Put together, Shabbat is about 25 hours long. Friday night to Saturday night. I went over the Torah portion and Haftarah portion, like I wanted to, as well. Looked through my mom's Tehillim (Psalms) book. (Or, was my mom's. It's mine now, but I'm just getting used to that idea still.) It had the psalms categorized in the table of contents, and each weekday/Shabbat had a certain chunk of them designated for it. The categories were things like: for when you or someone you know are sick, weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, death, success, gratitude, etc. They also had prayers before and after you read them. It was very interesting.
I also read a lot of the book, Day of Atonement by Faye Kellerman. I was close to halfway through it before reading it on Shabbat. I finished it just a little after. Didn't know I'd get to reading so much of it.
It was good, but at times, really graphic. There were no pics, but she writes so well, you can easily imagine those scenes. When I stopped reading it to go to bed Friday night, I had stopped at one of the most gruesome murder scenes. It kind of seeped into my dreams. Yay!This one had a bittersweet ending. They found the kidnapped kid, but the stuff that the killer made him do, made him go crazy. Or more like, made him feel like he didn't deserve to live. Didn't deserve to be loved by his family. So, he was alive, but he seemed an empty shell of who he used to be. He ended up caring more about his family, though. And, Peter Decker was welcomed into his biological family. He was struggling with it ever since it dawned on him that he finally met his biological mother. He didn't want anyone but her and Rina to know. His biological mom told his step siblings anyways. And, there was a touching scene at the airport just before Rina, him, and the kids were going to leave. All 5 of those new 'siblings' hugged him, sang, danced, cried, and called him brother. He wasn't expecting it, smiled, and started to get teary eyed. When he was a teenager, he always wanted to know about his biological family, and signed up for a national directory that had a list of adopted people that wanted to find their biological families. No one contacted him, so he grew bitter about it. Thinking they wouldn't be his real family anyways. The mom said that she didn't contact him, because she felt ashamed for what she was forced to do. But, she wanted to have some sort of relationship with him now. He felt sorry for her, but refused it up until close to the end. They're an orthodox Jewish family, too. So, quite different than the Baptist one he was raised in. All the books in the series have Jewish themes, which makes it really interesting. It's not a 'religious' series, but there's the cultural, customs, and traditional aspects that are thrown in. I guess the series is really a detective/mystery series with a Jewish twist.
Anyways, the next book I have of the series is called Sanctuary. It looks thicker than the one I just read. I'm missing 2 books in the series that were in between Day of Atonement, and Sanctuary. That's ok. It'll probably still be easy to dive into again. Also didn't have one book that was in between Sacred and Profane, and Day of Atonement. They apparently had the wedding in that one. But, at least in Day of Atonement they recapped that a bit. So, the next one's going to be about a rich orthodox Jewish family, and the father dealt in the jewelry business. One day, they all disappeared. Should be interesting.
Also, took a nice walk. I'm going to try to get at least one in during each Shabbat. That also means I won't be bringing my mp3 player on those walks. I went with Dad this time, which was nice. If I take one by myself, then it still might be nice. I could focus more on the sounds around me, go slower (or at least a nice leisurely pace), go further if I wanted to (could do this part while walking with someone, too), several short ones, and more. After the main part of our walk, we went to see how much of the greenbelt was demolished behind us. They're apparently building a 2-way street back there. There will also be sidewalks and bike lanes, supposedly. It was a pretty thick greenbelt behind us, and stretched quite a ways on either side of the backyard. Now there's a huge hole halfway through where the trees once were. Like it suddenly just opened up. I don't know if they're actually going as far as the part of the greenbelt that's right behind the house. The farm and farmer's fence (I think) are still up. But, the house to the left of us, already has quite a bit of the greenbelt stripped away on their side. I've never seen it this way. There are huge piles of tree debris, too. They might be waiting for drier weather in order to set them on fire. That might not be good for the atmosphere, and might get into people's homes. Doesn't sound healthy.I also don't like the idea that the animals we normally might see, might have been driven out of their homes.
There was a large multi-generational family of raccoons living back in that area. Occasionally, they'd come through with their babies. Now, it's less likely we'll see them. I don't know if the coyotes (or wolves?) are leaving now, too. Although, they always sound so far away. It's just sad to see.
I decided to eat in the dining room during Shabbat, too. I normally eat on the couch in the family room in front of the TV. Seems too tempting when you want to 'unplug' to sit over there to eat.Also, Shabbat is supposed to be 'separate' or different. I also had tea with almost every meal. Used the kettle on the stove, rather than the microwave. The microwave is another electronic...So, I didn't use it. Almost everything I had during the day was either cold or room temperature. Except for the tea, and a few chicken sausage links for breakfast I cooked in a frying pan on the stove. It was actually nice.
I also thought it'd be a good time to play games. Like card or board games. I decided to play some rounds of solitaire. Won 2 out of about 5 rounds...
It used to be one of my fave games. Next time, I might ask if Dad wants to play a board game with me, and/or I can play some trivia games. When I do have my 'electronics', I feel I don't have time for those. But, I could go back to them, if I keep this up.
I think it was my 2nd or 3rd Havdalah done by myself. When Mom was around, we still didn't do it that often. Havdalah is the service/ritual that ends Shabbat. It's very short, but nice. I used the special Havdalah candle I got from Tzfat or Safed. This type of candle is braided, and has many wicks. Mine's a rainbow of colors. The shop where I got it at was really cool. They had huge sculptures made entirely of wax on display behind glass, they handmade the candles in front of the customers, had many different types, and more. It'd be cool to go back there someday. Mom made a 'spice box' herself out of a glass jar that's filled with all sorts of spices, and a metal lid with holes in it on top. Kind of like a short parmesan/red pepper shaker you might find at a pizza place, only with a variety of spices inside. On top of the lid, she added a piece of plastic wrap to go over the holes, and a big rubber band to keep it down. To keep it sealed up until the next time we use it, too. She also painted designs on it. It's really cool. Feels even more special this way, too.
I used grape juice instead of wine. I can't drink alcohol, and they say grape juice is just as good for it. (Just has to be 'fruit of the vine'. Doesn't mean it has to be fermented.) It's kind of hard to have only one person doing it all.The candle's held the entire time (occasionally raised up a bit), there's the custom of putting your other hand up to the candle to see the reflection on your fingernails (you don't have to, though), there's the blessings to follow along in the book, there's a part where you drink the 'wine' (so you have to hold the candle, drink, and say the blessing...), and then there's the spices you're supposed to smell (while, again, still holding the candle). But, I was able to do it! Yay!
I just forgot the beginning melodies for the first blessing.
At least, I managed to say that one.
I really do think I'll continue doing this for Shabbat. It felt really good. For some reason, even just the feeling of not looking at something electronic felt comforting or relaxing. Felt more focused, too. My eyes didn't feel as strained or tired by the end of the day. The only thing I did use that was really electronic was the stove's clock. I didn't use the timer part or anything, but I needed it to see what time it was...
I don't have a working analog watch anymore. But, I know some people say if something was turned on before Shabbat and you don't mess with it, it's ok. So, I'm going with that. I didn't touch it during that time. I still think that's being 'unplugged', too. I think it might be healthy anyways to have a day set aside to be unplugged. Felt like I actually observed Shabbat. Definitely felt more of a connection with it. Similar to a connection or feeling that I haven't felt in a long time. Hard to describe. So, there was obviously a spiritual part of it, as well.
Rosie kept following me around. I think she realized I wasn't doing my 'normal' stuff, and wondered what was going on. Wherever I went, she ended up guarding me really closely. I think she liked what I was doing, but again, seemed confused by it.
Or: Who Are You Protecting. This is from the first Rurouni Kenshin OST. I featured the original version a while back. So, why not this one? There's also an acoustic version, electric guitar version, and a 'hard' version. The original and the strings versions seem the best to me. This is one of Kenshin's character themes. All of the different versions for this fits him really well. I finished the anime a while back.
Started watching the 1st live-action movie version of Rurouni Kenshin today. I'm about a quarter of the way through, but it's already much better than I expected.
(It's a little over 2 hours long. Didn't really want to sit through the whole thing at once.) It really does translate over to the 'real world' well. The fights have been a bit dramatic, like the anime, but well done. The actors have been spot on so far. The one who plays Kenshin would seem to have the toughest role. Considering he has a split personality. Also read that the actor that plays him did all of his own stunts. He has the vocal quirks down, too. Interesting considering the original voice actress that voiced him made him sound so unique. Not sure if I like the way Yahiko looks, but I've only seen him in one scene so far. Very briefly. They changed the plot a bit, too. But, that kind of thing makes it more interesting. Also, read that the original mangaka (manga creator) loved it. That's a good sign. The music is really good, too. The cinematography is gorgeous at times.There are 2 more live-action movies for it. All of them seem to have good reviews. I might watch them slowly in order. I started prednisone last Thursday. I'm having some strange side effects, but nothing really big or life-threatening.
Also, those side effects change depending on how long its been since I took the dose. Right away I feel sleepy. Then, a little while later, I feel like something really heavy is weighing down on my shoulders and chest. A little after that, I seem to have a semi-energy boost (not much...), and a warm feeling. Then, I feel antsy and there's a weird pain in my chest. Sometimes I've felt very frustrated at that time. Then, I become relaxed and sleepy. It's a weird whirlwind of side effects. But, I have noticed that my joints seem to be feeling better. I'm not as nauseous, but that might be because of decreasing my azathioprine dose. I've decreased my balsalazide dose as well. Feels nicer just to take 1 dose a day now. 3 huge pills is better than the 6 a day. (Right after my colonoscopy, it was 9 of those huge pills a day...)So far I've gotten 8 test results back from my blood draw. I don't really know how many there will be, or if these are all I'll get back. My sed rate is better than last time. It's 30 instead of 34. Sed rate shows how much inflammation there is, and can be indicative of remission. 0-22mm/hr is the normal range. My highest was 44 back at the end of June. I was slowly going down into normal range, and then it suddenly increased last time. Not by much, but it was the first time that it started to go back up. I'm glad it's on the decline, again. Really good sign.
Hope it continues to go down. Had a test result for tuberculosis for the first time. It came back negative. That's a good thing. I think they have to test for it before you take prednisone. Everything else came back normal. Although, a few of the test results were the highest I've ever had before on, I think, the 'general panel'. They were the highest I've ever had them last time, too. They're just barely still within normal range. I'm a little nervous about that.Especially considering that's not truly my norm for them. (My actual norm, where I hover around usually, might be different than the general population's norm.) I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on those. For Shabbat, I did 'unplug', and tried to start and end it on time. It was a really nice relaxing, yet refreshing, experience.
I was only a few minutes off with starting it, but it was still before sunset. A lot more 'on time' than I normally would do it. I finished it exactly on time. I got in as much time with my electronics beforehand, and cleaned up as much as I could, too. I don't normally get to cleaning the dining room table beforehand, so that was good. I was a little late with starting, since we were still at the grocery store. I think if the candles are lit within that 18 minute time period, it's pretty much still on time. That's 18 minutes before sunset. I also made sure my computer was off beforehand, my phone was somewhere away from me, put my mp3 player out of sight, etc. That I think helped a lot. It felt like a completely different atmosphere. I thought I would get bored without electronics during that time. So, I looked online to get some ideas for what to do beforehand. There were a few that got me a little more inspired about it. I already had some ideas, but it was good to see what others might do. I wrote a lot of ideas down, but interestingly I didn't get to everything. I, of course, wanted to do my own Friday night service, Saturday morning service, afternoon service, and a Havdalah service. I thought that would still leave quite a bit of time left. Put together, Shabbat is about 25 hours long. Friday night to Saturday night. I went over the Torah portion and Haftarah portion, like I wanted to, as well. Looked through my mom's Tehillim (Psalms) book. (Or, was my mom's. It's mine now, but I'm just getting used to that idea still.
) It had the psalms categorized in the table of contents, and each weekday/Shabbat had a certain chunk of them designated for it. The categories were things like: for when you or someone you know are sick, weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, death, success, gratitude, etc. They also had prayers before and after you read them. It was very interesting.I also read a lot of the book, Day of Atonement by Faye Kellerman. I was close to halfway through it before reading it on Shabbat. I finished it just a little after. Didn't know I'd get to reading so much of it.
It was good, but at times, really graphic. There were no pics, but she writes so well, you can easily imagine those scenes. When I stopped reading it to go to bed Friday night, I had stopped at one of the most gruesome murder scenes. It kind of seeped into my dreams. Yay!This one had a bittersweet ending. They found the kidnapped kid, but the stuff that the killer made him do, made him go crazy. Or more like, made him feel like he didn't deserve to live. Didn't deserve to be loved by his family. So, he was alive, but he seemed an empty shell of who he used to be. He ended up caring more about his family, though. And, Peter Decker was welcomed into his biological family. He was struggling with it ever since it dawned on him that he finally met his biological mother. He didn't want anyone but her and Rina to know. His biological mom told his step siblings anyways. And, there was a touching scene at the airport just before Rina, him, and the kids were going to leave. All 5 of those new 'siblings' hugged him, sang, danced, cried, and called him brother. He wasn't expecting it, smiled, and started to get teary eyed. When he was a teenager, he always wanted to know about his biological family, and signed up for a national directory that had a list of adopted people that wanted to find their biological families. No one contacted him, so he grew bitter about it. Thinking they wouldn't be his real family anyways. The mom said that she didn't contact him, because she felt ashamed for what she was forced to do. But, she wanted to have some sort of relationship with him now. He felt sorry for her, but refused it up until close to the end. They're an orthodox Jewish family, too. So, quite different than the Baptist one he was raised in. All the books in the series have Jewish themes, which makes it really interesting. It's not a 'religious' series, but there's the cultural, customs, and traditional aspects that are thrown in. I guess the series is really a detective/mystery series with a Jewish twist. Anyways, the next book I have of the series is called Sanctuary. It looks thicker than the one I just read. I'm missing 2 books in the series that were in between Day of Atonement, and Sanctuary. That's ok. It'll probably still be easy to dive into again. Also didn't have one book that was in between Sacred and Profane, and Day of Atonement. They apparently had the wedding in that one. But, at least in Day of Atonement they recapped that a bit. So, the next one's going to be about a rich orthodox Jewish family, and the father dealt in the jewelry business. One day, they all disappeared. Should be interesting.
Also, took a nice walk. I'm going to try to get at least one in during each Shabbat. That also means I won't be bringing my mp3 player on those walks. I went with Dad this time, which was nice. If I take one by myself, then it still might be nice. I could focus more on the sounds around me, go slower (or at least a nice leisurely pace), go further if I wanted to (could do this part while walking with someone, too), several short ones, and more. After the main part of our walk, we went to see how much of the greenbelt was demolished behind us. They're apparently building a 2-way street back there. There will also be sidewalks and bike lanes, supposedly. It was a pretty thick greenbelt behind us, and stretched quite a ways on either side of the backyard. Now there's a huge hole halfway through where the trees once were. Like it suddenly just opened up. I don't know if they're actually going as far as the part of the greenbelt that's right behind the house. The farm and farmer's fence (I think) are still up. But, the house to the left of us, already has quite a bit of the greenbelt stripped away on their side. I've never seen it this way. There are huge piles of tree debris, too. They might be waiting for drier weather in order to set them on fire. That might not be good for the atmosphere, and might get into people's homes. Doesn't sound healthy.
I also don't like the idea that the animals we normally might see, might have been driven out of their homes.There was a large multi-generational family of raccoons living back in that area. Occasionally, they'd come through with their babies. Now, it's less likely we'll see them. I don't know if the coyotes (or wolves?) are leaving now, too. Although, they always sound so far away. It's just sad to see. I decided to eat in the dining room during Shabbat, too. I normally eat on the couch in the family room in front of the TV. Seems too tempting when you want to 'unplug' to sit over there to eat.
Also, Shabbat is supposed to be 'separate' or different. I also had tea with almost every meal. Used the kettle on the stove, rather than the microwave. The microwave is another electronic...So, I didn't use it. Almost everything I had during the day was either cold or room temperature. Except for the tea, and a few chicken sausage links for breakfast I cooked in a frying pan on the stove. It was actually nice. I also thought it'd be a good time to play games. Like card or board games. I decided to play some rounds of solitaire. Won 2 out of about 5 rounds...
It used to be one of my fave games. Next time, I might ask if Dad wants to play a board game with me, and/or I can play some trivia games. When I do have my 'electronics', I feel I don't have time for those. But, I could go back to them, if I keep this up.I think it was my 2nd or 3rd Havdalah done by myself. When Mom was around, we still didn't do it that often. Havdalah is the service/ritual that ends Shabbat. It's very short, but nice. I used the special Havdalah candle I got from Tzfat or Safed. This type of candle is braided, and has many wicks. Mine's a rainbow of colors. The shop where I got it at was really cool. They had huge sculptures made entirely of wax on display behind glass, they handmade the candles in front of the customers, had many different types, and more. It'd be cool to go back there someday. Mom made a 'spice box' herself out of a glass jar that's filled with all sorts of spices, and a metal lid with holes in it on top. Kind of like a short parmesan/red pepper shaker you might find at a pizza place, only with a variety of spices inside. On top of the lid, she added a piece of plastic wrap to go over the holes, and a big rubber band to keep it down. To keep it sealed up until the next time we use it, too. She also painted designs on it. It's really cool. Feels even more special this way, too.
I used grape juice instead of wine. I can't drink alcohol, and they say grape juice is just as good for it. (Just has to be 'fruit of the vine'. Doesn't mean it has to be fermented.) It's kind of hard to have only one person doing it all.The candle's held the entire time (occasionally raised up a bit), there's the custom of putting your other hand up to the candle to see the reflection on your fingernails (you don't have to, though), there's the blessings to follow along in the book, there's a part where you drink the 'wine' (so you have to hold the candle, drink, and say the blessing...), and then there's the spices you're supposed to smell (while, again, still holding the candle). But, I was able to do it! Yay!I just forgot the beginning melodies for the first blessing.At least, I managed to say that one. I really do think I'll continue doing this for Shabbat. It felt really good. For some reason, even just the feeling of not looking at something electronic felt comforting or relaxing. Felt more focused, too. My eyes didn't feel as strained or tired by the end of the day. The only thing I did use that was really electronic was the stove's clock. I didn't use the timer part or anything, but I needed it to see what time it was...
I don't have a working analog watch anymore. But, I know some people say if something was turned on before Shabbat and you don't mess with it, it's ok. So, I'm going with that. I didn't touch it during that time. I still think that's being 'unplugged', too. I think it might be healthy anyways to have a day set aside to be unplugged. Felt like I actually observed Shabbat. Definitely felt more of a connection with it. Similar to a connection or feeling that I haven't felt in a long time. Hard to describe. So, there was obviously a spiritual part of it, as well. Rosie kept following me around. I think she realized I wasn't doing my 'normal' stuff, and wondered what was going on. Wherever I went, she ended up guarding me really closely. I think she liked what I was doing, but again, seemed confused by it.
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