perambulations

nerdiness and happiness!

2009-12-19T15:47:53Z

I learned a new word today.

Fantast:
A visionary or dreamer; one who indulges in fantasies and daydreaming. Also phantast.

This makes me happy. ^_^

Also, I've been doing okay over the past couple days, which feels good.

On a more frivolous note...

2009-07-05T02:02:01Z

So Mike got this game, Fight Night Round 4. It has the ability to take a picture and create a fighter from it. Meaning, you can take a picture of yourself and put your head on a boxer. So Mike was having fun imagining making himself, and Barack Obama, and McCain, and all, and I said hey, you should totally make me! Because, aside from the amusement factor, I'm kind of curious about what I would look like as a boy.

The answer: really girly. Not that surprising, all things considered, but still amusing. The only thing making boxer-me look at all masculine is the facial hair, which is designed to outline the jaw. And I still look, to use Mike's words, like a Backstreet Boy. Very...pretty. The rendering is actually fairly impressive, though - because however amusing the result, the guy actually looks a lot like me. Brow, nose, cheeks, jawline, the works, right down to the slight hint of foreign-ness. When it first popped up, Mike and were both like, whoa...that's almost freaky.

So yeah. That was my amusement for the night. If I can figure out how to get pictures on the computer (and if anyone is interested in what I look like with a sex change and a beard), I'll put one up.

Hee!

iliachenvaar @ 2009-04-03T07:51:00

2009-04-03T11:52:48Z

I frigging hate job-hunting. I've been doing this for three days and I'm already depressed.

Not good.

free time

2009-03-27T22:04:50Z

I have decided that I need a hobby. Really. I mean, I even briefly considered learning how to crochet. Either that, or I need some friends somewhere within a ten-mile radius. That'd be helpful too. Ohmigod. I'm getting tired of having free time, just because I don't seem to have anything really good to do with it.

In any case. I did not intend to wander off in that direction. I've been thinking of taking up online role-playing. I like RPing, a lot, and it's pretty clear that there are no table-tops in my immediate future. Which leaves the internet. Unfortunately, the internet is a very large place, and I have no idea where I can find a good role-playing forum. Or, for that matter, what kind I want. Thoughts, people?

Although on the topic of friends, the girl I'm training to replace me at CDN is really cool, and I'm considering trying to keep in touch with her after I leave. We have a fair bit in common, I think. We're both really nerdy, for one, if in slightly different ways. Also we have a similar tendency towards a frequently adorable enthusiasm. *grin. This has been coming up a lot recently for her, as she wants to go into medicine, and she's really, genuinely excited about working on this study. But before she decided she wanted to go into medicine, she went to school for music. The clinic we were at today plays classical music in the background, and she kept on identifying the pieces. And then saying that she wondered who picked the music, because whoever it was had really good taste and she wished she could meet them. You can see why I think we have some things in common. *grin. Plus, I enjoy her company. *shrug. We'll see how that works out.

Meantime, my last day at CDN is going to be Monday, and so I will have a whole bunch of things to do after that. (Lest I go crazy with too much free time.) Like finding a part-time job. Potentially. The temp agency does do some part-time employment-type things, which could work for me. We'll see.

In other news, Mike finally got to go see the apartment. Apparently it's quite nice, all in all, with a large living room & foyer as well as some decent walk-in closets, if a somewhat narrow bedroom. So hopefully we'll be able to move in before the end of April. Hooray!

And I think that's about it for now. Good fortune in all your endeavors, my comrades!

iliachenvaar @ 2009-03-11T18:07:00

2009-03-11T22:43:14Z

So. Stuff. The thing that comes most immediately to mind is that I'm wondering what the eff is up with my moods. I don't know if it's weird hormonal shit, or stress, or sleep deprivation, or all of the above, but for the past three days I have been totally looping the loop. Not constantly. But at least once every day I've more or less without provocation experienced some really negative emotion. Monday it was rage, yesterday it was misery, and today it was anxiety. And then, after an afternoon that was excruciating in its entire vacuum of activity, I had a totally random minute or two of euphoria. I mean, it was enjoyable and all, but, y'know, weird.

Also, I saw Watchmen over the weekend. It was quite excellent. Not quite as good as the book, but I'd expected that. All things considered, they were fairly faithful. They changed the ending, of course, to make it a little more palatable. Also the mechanism of the ultimate...adversary's plot. Which I actually liked; I thought it made the whole story seem rather more unified. Although it does make it a little harder to explain the Comedian's knowledge. Not that that was particularly well-explained to begin with, come to that.

Okay, no more without spoilers. But for any of you who have seen it, come talk to me, because I really enjoy talking about it. And for any of you who might have been debating seeing it: do so. It is well worth it. I saw a billboard for it today, and I actually briefly considered going to see it again in theaters - and I've never seen a movie twice in the theater in my life. (Although this was during my two minutes of bubble-dom, which might be worth mentioning. *grin.)

I had fun afterward, too. Mike and I had gone with some friends of his from work, Barrett and Yonni. (I'm pretty sure that's not actually how her name is spelled, but I've never seen it, so I'm going with that.) The four of us wandered around together in the streets around the theater for a little while. (We had gone to a theater in Manhattan near their work, on the grounds that it was the only place all of us would be able to find.) Then Barrett had to split, so Mike and Yonni and I went up to - Columbus Circle? I can't remember the exact name. Near 59th Street, west side. We found a diner, got food, hung out, talked about the movie and all kinds of other random stuff. Then we wandered around in a Borders for a while. Mike picked up a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which he says is a lot of fun, and I finally picked up a Thursday Next novel - and thank you, Alana, it is indeed quite enjoyable. Then Mike and Yonni discovered that I had never read Corduroy as a child, so we found a chair and Yonni read it to Mike and me kindergarten-teacher style. Also, they had quotes on the ceilings. It was quite excellent. There was some cool artwork right outside, too.

In other news, Riverbay canceled our apartment viewing this afternoon - something about it not being ready. Which was rather disappointing, but hopefully we'll get to see it soon. If we can get the timing right for moving in, we might be able to hit the Easter sales at furniture places and pick up some new furniture relative inexpensively. (It would be ever-so-nice to have a new bed. Actually, more a new mattress, as the one on the bed now is...well, less than optimal. But we're planning on getting a queen-sized bed when we can, and there would be little point in getting a nice new mattress only to have to buy another for a new bed.) And Mike would prefer to get new furniture, if we're getting. I admit I would too. Things feel more all-yours when they're new, and also it's easier to get closer to exactly what you want. Fortunately, both Mike and I have relatively inexpensive tastes, in furniture as well as in any number of other things. *grin.

I think that's about it right now. Love to all!

Me

Thing 2

2009-03-08T03:46:56Z

So I cannot for the life of me remember how this came up, but Mike and I were on the bus the other day and we decided that it would be fun for me to make a project of trying to visit every bookstore in New York City. Independent bookstores, that is, of course, not the chains. And I was like, that would be really fun. Like, I remember randomly finding this bookstore that specialized in antique books. It was cool, y'know? And then Mike was like, you could write a blog about it. And I was like, - what?

I mean, on the one hand, I know zillions of people write blogs about that kind of thing. Or books, god knows, there are plenty of books like that. And in a way it would be fun to write things up about them for you guys to read. I suppose if someone else were doing it, I would probably be passingly interested in the project. But on the other hand...yeah. I feel like telling other people about your experiences should not be part of your purpose in having them. They should be worthwhile on their own. And this would be. I'm just not sure I want to go into it with the express plan of writing a blog about it.

Also, there are yoga/pilates classes being offered somewhere in this vicinity. I'm not sure how good they are, or whether they're cheap or expensive or whether I can afford them either way, but I really want to check them out.

And I had a really awesome day today, but an update on that will have to wait because I'm really tired. Time for bed.

Especially because I just typed "bad" instead of "bed." Wow. Fail.

G'night, guys.

lists

2009-03-01T22:34:32Z

So I decided recently to start trying to plan for an apartment as opposed to a wedding, since A) my wedding planning was apparently bothering Mike and B) the managing company finally called us and told us they had an apartment to show us. So. I made up a list of start-up necessities for an apartment - from the big things, like major appliances and furniture, to the littler things, like dishes. Then I started sorting out what we already had, or could borrow temporarily, from what we needed to buy. Then I started running around on the internet looking for how much all these different things cost. I added that to the list, along with places where we might find each item. I added up all the costs. (Right now, without tax or delivery charges or possible mis-estimated or forgotten items, it comes to about $3500.) Then I added another sheet to the spreadsheet I had set it up in, and re-sorted the list based on where to get the items. Now, I did all this in just a few hours yesterday. And now I'm frustrated because I had all this momentum built up in terms of planning, and I can't go anywhere because we haven't even actually seen the apartment yet. This is ridiculous. I don't know what's wrong with me. Do I just randomly have all kinds of extra mental energy lying around, or what? I mean, I guess that wouldn't be all that surprising, working on the blood pressure study is not exactly mentally taxing, but this is just getting to be irritating. I keep throwing myself into projects and then going stir-crazy, or something, when I can't keep going with them. I've never been this much of a do-er. I don't know why I've suddenly become one.

Maybe my German-ity is just coming out.

Yes, I do in fact spend a lot of time looking at other people's subway reading material.

2009-02-21T00:08:21Z

I do sometimes bring my own. Really. It's just that a lot of times I'm too tired to feel like reading. Also, Mike usually goes to sleep on me in the mornings, which makes it kind of difficult to read.

But. I saw a couple of books recently (besides Watchmen) that caught my eye. The first one was Away, by Amy Bloom. It was the cover that arrested my attention. (You can see a picture of it here.) It's just...such a remarkable contrast, the still life and the landscape. I mean, the still life looks like one of those really, really old school paintings, with just the fruit and the bowl and the table and little to no background, only maybe some dark-colored drapes fading into blackness. Those were always associated, for me, with an extraordinary sense of confinement - not necessarily physical, but psychological. Something along the lines of the extreme propriety one associates with, for instance, Victorian times. "Things must be perfectly thus and so, and no other way." The fruit has to be shining and round and ripe and perfect, and there can be no breath of movement to disturb it. Still lifes like that always made me feel trapped in an amber stillness of suffocation and stagnation. The landscape, by contrast...it's true you don't really think of landscapes moving around, either. And in general, I'm not actually a big fan of landscapes, partly for that reason. But this one reminds me a lot of the Hudson River School. It's golden, metaphorically as well as literally. Looking at it, you feel like the artist is saying, look at this. Look how beautiful it is, look how boundless it is. Look at the possibilities stretching out and out into the hazy golden distance.

Probably most of this is just me. But really, just that image gave me this really weird feeling of cognitive dissonance. I wonder a lot if it was intended or not, or if other people experience it the same way. And if it wasn't intended, what was the thought behind the imagery? *shakes head. I dunno. Like I said, it caught my attention.

The other book that caught my attention was called Seasoned with Salt. (Quite frankly, I have no idea why it was called that. Possibly a reference I'm not familiar with, I don't know.) This one, though, it wasn't exactly the book itself that got my brain turning. It was the whole salt thing. Seasoned with salt. What the hell does that mean? I don't know, but someone entitled what looked like a fairly serious book that. Which got me thinking. Salt is kind of a weird...concept-bundle, in our language and culture. I mean, on the one hand, it's as common as clay. Everyone has some in their kitchen, you use it all the time, you throw it in your food without really thinking about it. You feel slightly nagged to eat less of it in the same way you feel nagged by some vague but pervasive "they" to eat less junk food, an injunction you've heard so much that it becomes background, like the irritating high-pitched whine of the television. Salt is less than ordinary.

On the other hand. You have things like books entitled Seasoned with Salt. Salt has a strange weight sometimes. We have phrases and ideas like salt tears and the salt sea. They resonate, even when if you look straight at them it's sometimes hard to tell why. Accumulated cultural weight, or sensitivity, or something. Tears, and the ocean, are...vital, both in the sense of being critically important, and in the sense of being powerfully alive. And yet - adding salt still adds something to them. An extra density. And there are other important things that are salty. Sweat. Blood. Salt also has this sense of worth or value. There's the phrase "worth his salt," for example, old and degraded as it is. The idea was still powerful, once, and may still be so. And one can also go back to sweat, and blood. They also have a sense of worth.

It's difficult to reconcile all these ideas and images to one object, difficult to think of one object meaning all of them simultaneously. It's one of the things that fascinates me about meaning, the complex and contradictory multiplicity of it. It seems...almost like the physical world, actually. Incredible complexity reaching both up and down far past the eye's, or the mind's, ability to perceive. With, in the world of meaning, boundless contradiction thrown in gratis. I love that world.

Maybe I'm mad -

- but I still love it.

An attempt to post something on a semi-regular basis. No matter how trivial.

2009-02-18T01:57:12Z

I saw a guy reading Watchmen on the subway today. It pleased me.

And as long as I'm on the subject of books, I randomly came across this neat-looking graphic novel in a bookstore in Grand Central. I used up the last bit of my gift cards to Barnes & Noble and bought it, along with another one that went before it. I thought. Actually, the second one was a young adult novel, not graphic novel, and it fully encompassed the graphic novel, just from a wider perspective. It was pretty good. I wish it had been an adult novel, though; there were a couple of scenes that were fine for a younger audience, but which I would've really liked to see developed more.

Also, I have been slowly working my way through the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft. It has given me bizarre dreams. Also an interest in reading Lord Dunsany. And I've become slightly fascinated with his descriptions in the way that usually would have led to a paper if I were in a college class. Sadly, I am not. Maybe I'll get more into it later.

Variations on a theme. (Books.)

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams.

A rather entertaining poem, actually.

Though I do enjoy most of the (admittedly few) William Carlos Williams poems I've been exposed to. White chickens, red wheelbarrow, cold plums, etc.

Huh. I haven't done a poetry post in a while.

...Okay, I think I'm done now.

iliachenvaar @ 2008-11-05T12:28:00

2008-11-05T17:35:19Z

Let's see.

1. Obligatory Obama yay!

2. I have students to tutor. Must call them (that is, their parents) soon. Probably this afternoon.

3. It makes me happy when people ask me for directions in this city and I can give them to them. (Wow, what an awkward phrase.) This is silly, but I'm okay with it. ^_^

4. Lunch.

I am sorry that there isn't more of it - there really should be - but despite my terrible communication, I love you all, and I hope to actually catch up with you soon.

<3,
Me

Also

2008-10-28T16:12:42Z

I had an interview with a tutoring agency yesterday. It wasn't much of an interview, but it's something, I guess. I got the job. I signed up for a training session tomorrow.

Part of the interview was a multiple-choice test. And since I'm a really fast test-taker, I got done long before everyone else. And I started making sentences.

I've done this before here, but there's a good chance no one but Mai-Anh remembers, so I will explain this again: sometimes I get the beginning of a sentence stuck in my head, but it doesn't have an ending. So I start making up endings. This time it was "If no one..." They had bits of scrap paper in the middle of the table at the interview for if you needed to work out math problems. I started writing sentences in around my math problems, and when I ran out of space, I got another scrap of paper and started filling it, too. There aren't very many, but here we go:

If no one laughed, how bleak and grey the world would be.
If no one knew, could I forget, could I just go on with my life?
If no one remembered, what would we be?

And then I segued into just "If..."

If I believed, what would I be?
If I never met you, I would never have become whole, and I would not now be broken.**

This is the point at which I realized I had lost the no one.

If...
If...
If...

Which was, incidentally, the theme of the Governor's School this past summer.

If I lost you, what would I lose?**

**None of the "you"s in these sentences refer to anyone reading this journal.

Not so many, this time, and not such a variety. Nothing concrete. Maybe I was in a strange mood, although looking back, it doesn't seem that way. *shrug.

I think this is my own personal brand of meme.

Your turn. If what? Finish the sentence.

Ugh.

2008-10-28T14:01:57Z

I really hate weather like this - grey, foggy, and rainy. I'm not too terribly opposed to any of them individually, but when they all combine, I just want to crawl back into bed and go to sleep until they go away.

yuck

2008-10-20T14:32:56Z

So first I wake up five days in a row with a stomachache, and then I wake up with a headcold. This isn't fair.

Blech.

mm, pie

2008-10-16T21:21:00Z

So I'm wondering a little if I have some heretofore unknown talent for baking. Cooking I just feel awkward doing, but baking is easy. Even baking things I've never really tried before. I made an apple pie more or less by myself the other day (with a recipe, but also with improvisation), and it turned out really amazing. Mike's comment was, "Is it weird that eating this made me want to do you?" *grin.

So yes. Pie. It was exciting.

Also, I had a temp job for a week (seven days straight), which was really great for getting me un-depressed. I was too damn busy. Also, I was tutoring at the same time. Well, I still am tutoring, but without working a ten-hour day as well, that doesn't keep me quite as busy. Now I just have to stay un-depressed. That could be more difficult. On the plus side, there's a possibility of another temp job, this one, fortunately, lasting longer and with more reasonable hours. *crosses fingers. I really, really don't want to get that depressed again. Ugh.

And now, off to cook dinner. And later, more pie!

Should I be wearing a checked, ruffle-edged apron or something? I have that image in my head right now.

Today has been...

2008-08-25T17:32:30Z

...problematic.

This is an upgrade from totally shitty, so I guess I'll go with it.

But I figured since you guys haven't heard much of anything from me in ages, maybe I should update.

I'm in New York. I'm trying to find a job. So far I've been failing miserably. It's pretty depressing.

On the plus side, Mike got a job shortly after I got here, one he enjoys, so he's pretty happy. And with his income, we can probably get a place in his neighborhood fairly soon. Thus no more staying with his parents, which will be nice.

And I'm hungry - I ate a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast about five hours ago (and still haven't done the dishes) - but since I've had a bad day, I don't really feel like eating.

Theoretically I should tell you about my bad day, being as I'm here, but having begun to feel marginally better (I have graduated from crappy to depressed to merely tired), I'm not at the moment particularly inclined to revisit the reasons for my woe. And other than that, there really isn't anything going on. Which is pretty sad, really. Not only am I boring, I'm utterly failing to accomplish anything. I mean, one or the other is bad enough, but both at the same time is just depressing.

Oh. I lied. I did go see a play a week ago. Mike and I met up with Jason and saw this thing that was a musical comedy history of China. It was okay. There were bits of it that I really liked, and bits of it that were a little annoying, and so forth. I also learned a couple things. How long I'll remember them, I don't know, but hey. It's worth something, I guess.

Okay, so other than that I'm a boring failure.

That came out sounding a lot harsher than I meant it to.

Bleh. Stupid life.

dihp894yhp84ha;ehf

2008-08-20T15:16:28Z

I just had a phone interview. And I'm pretty sure it went BADLY.

hwi83[83hro;aiwhefrpoaw9

I hate job-searching.

iliachenvaar @ 2008-07-07T11:04:00

2008-07-07T15:05:20Z

omg Governor's School.

That is all.

fun with holidays

2008-06-17T22:38:44Z

Hi, guys. So, I'm trying to prepare for Governor's School (in between frantically doing other things), and one way that I need to prepare is to get outfits for the various dances. Some of these are relatively simple. Goodness knows my family has enough "Around the World" clothing to outfit half the camp. But "All Holiday's Eve" is proving a little more difficult. I thought it would be fun to do a minor or really random holiday, so I went and looked up some lists. These are holidays that I thought might be fun, and my ideas for what I could do for them:

Earth Day (22 April)
Wear brown tank top and pants, paint leaf shapes on hands and face. Possibly streak hair green. Also could be Arbor Day. Bonus: restoration of Anne Marie the Tree! Also, face paint! Alternatively, figure out something else for clothing and paint globe on face. Still face paint! Detraction: difficulty of painting own face.

Guy Fawkes Night Day (5 November)
Basically, dress up as V. Bonus: V! Detraction: more money.

April Fools' Day (1 April)
No idea how to represent this, but potentially fun. Ideas?

International Talk Like a Pirate Day (19 September)
This should be obvious.

National Hugging Day - (January 21)
Wear a sign that says "FREE HUGS!" Bonus: free hugs, and less elaborate costume. Detraction: less elaborate costume.

Towel Day (25 May)
Wear a towel. With something underneath, of course. Bonus: less elaborate, but still fun. Detraction: possibly not allowed.

I'm leaning towards Earth/Arbor Day, because I love me some face paint, and it wouldn't require me getting a whole lot of anything new. But I'm still open to input. Which of these outfits would you guys most like to see pictures of me in?

Hee!

2008-06-02T03:21:08Z

I'm pleased with myself. I got my dad to read World War Z, and he likes it a lot. For context: my dad almost never reads anything but the newspaper and the Bible, and his taste in movies is mostly limited to romantic comedies. But. He has read 50 pages of World War Z tonight, and he likes it. He liked it after two pages. ^_^ *is pleased.

Update:
Up to 90 pages, and he says his eyes are burning but he's still reading. I win!

So about those letters...

2008-05-30T13:07:31Z

And other things. My desk drawers are now completely empty, and my floor is in a state of organized mess. A pile of stuff to throw away, a pile of stuff to give to my parents to see if they want (and for them to throw away if they don't), a pile of stuff to give to Goodwill (or someone), a pile of stuff that I want to keep (actually fairly small, go me), and a pile of stuff I'm not sure what to do with.

It's that last that's giving me trouble (naturally). It's a mixture of old letters and old writings - largely for classes high school and before, but all the same. Some of it I'll no doubt go ahead and toss. After a while, when I came up with bunches of folders and notebooks, I just started putting them in a stack to go through later. Some of it's incomplete work, and some of it I have no idea what it is. But there's a good bit of old creative writing (even if it is creative writing to some constricted assignment) and a couple of journals. And then there are letters.

I suppose the question really is, how important is it to me to remember these people? The people who wrote me letters, the person I used to be. I'm already starting to forget some. The few things I did re-read before I just started my stack shows that. But...is it important? I've been getting along just fine not remembering or mis-remembering. Not to mention the fact that I've probably only got so much storage space upstairs, and do I really want to spend in on people with whom I've long since lost all connection? Which I guess comes back to my own writings. Is it important to me to remember who I was? I don't know. A lot of times I don't want to because who I was makes me cringe. A lot of my old writings make me cringe. But then again, how much can you really expect from a seventh grader who isn't a prodigy? I wasn't. But my own personality also makes me cringe, setting aside the writings. On the other hand...just because I make myself cringe doesn't mean it's not important to remember myself and the people that mattered to me then. Of course, it doesn't mean it is important, either. I don't know. More practically speaking, I also know that I probably wouldn't re-read all this stuff with any regularity anyway. After all, I haven't for years. So even if I do believe it's important to me to remember, keeping all this stuff wouldn't necessarily ensure that I would. I would probably carry them with me and then not look at them again 'til I was moving again.

Is that enough? Or should I simply hold a wake for myself now, read them, remember, and bury them? I remember Matt posting here about how just before he went to college he went through all his old high school papers and burned them, slowly, piece by piece. I felt a little like that as I was going through my drawers, like I was...purging the clutter of my mind. I wasn't, really, my mind is still plenty cluttered, but...it felt good.

Maybe I won't keep them.

conundrum

2008-05-25T04:13:18Z

The other day, shortly before I geared myself up to discuss with my parents, particularly with my father, the breakdown of communication between us, my father said that he was surprised that I was looking for a job teaching. When I asked him why, he said that he'd always thought I was going to go really far with my writing and that my talent was wasted on teaching.

I'm not sure whether to be flattered or outraged.

look, procrastination!

2008-04-30T03:31:20Z


poetry is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

Yes, yes it is. ^_^ I got that on the first time, too! I'm pleased.

son of a bitch.

2008-04-25T17:23:18Z

"A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. ... On February 5, 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq."

Not that I wasn't expecting that after the third sentence, but still. *(#$YHF*E#*$UYGYI US government.

argh!

2008-04-21T13:15:48Z

The enter key had stopped fun*tioning on my keyboard, or at least the one in the main body of the keyboard has. As has the letter between X and V. Fortunately, none of my passwords *ontains it.

This is so annoying.

briefly

2008-04-19T15:30:43Z

I think I may be beginning to sleep properly again. Today was the first morning for a while that I didn't feel tired as soon as I popped out of bed. And the second in a while that I don't remember waking up in the night. I like these developments.

Also, this is totally hilarious:
http://community.livejournal.com/political_macro/17244.html#cutid1