i'm not going to get the fucking melodica. it just looks like too much trouble. i was looking around on their website and got intimidated by the tuning of the reeds and all that. if it's a serious instrument, i'd feel bad getting it and not investing any real time into it, which i wouldn't.
what i need is a nice fancy kazoo.
i can watch the sun set from my new office. it's beautiful, though my eyes are starting to hurt.
i have a snazzy new keyboard that i like a lot.
after seeing one of these things onstage at the clap your hands say yeah concert, i have decided that it is very important for me to purchase a melodica (i'll probably get the 3rd one down). while on some level i realize that this is a ridiculous impulse buy that will, after providing a little bit of entertainment, end up on a shelf where it is only taken down when people are drunkenly hanging out at my place (like the unclaimed baggage dulcimer), i nonetheless have decided that it is essential to my life. i must have one. and there's no way that this thing is as hard to play as a fucking accordion, so i should be able to use my remaining rudimentary piano-playing skills on this one.
the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster arrived today. i am happy.
i should not read stephen king until 3:45 in the morning when i am already in a delicate funk because then i will have nightmares.
i love my friends.
WOOO!!!!! GO BRUINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
final four for the first time since i was a high school senior. woo-hoo!
i went to see clap your hands say yeah on thursday. they have been one of my favorite new bands since last summer, and they were at the el rey theater on thursday as part of their first tour. it was completely fucking awesome. i love them.
this weekend my mom, my sister, her husband, their baby and i went up to santa barbara for the annual international orchid convention. i booked us a two-bedroom suite at the el encanto hotel, and we hung out and had a mellow weekend. this afternoon we went to the sale area to look at the ridiculously overwhelming variety of orchids you could buy there, and i picked out a gorgeous wine-red one to put in my office. this was after way too much indecision where the very nice man there (joe) explained all the different varieties and care and origins and stuff i already don't remember all of (though i now know how to look at the pseudo-bulb to see how healthy my plant is). my plant is named bartley-something after a very nice orchid-grower who has passed away.
tonight i finished my photo-mosaic simpsons puzzle, of which i am very proud. i got it last year (or the year before?) and started it with mimi. we got about a fifth or sixth of the way through it, and then my dad worked on it a few times, and it got to be maybe a fourth of the way done, and then i got some puzzle mat you can use to roll puzzles up, rolled it up, and we never worked on it since. a week or two ago i brought it over to my mom's and started working on it occasionally when we watched our netflix movies. i am very proud to be done with it, and plan like an elementary school kid to glue it and then frame it. woo.
bye!
so i played some no limit hold 'em last night. i was SHOCKED by the looseness with which people played ("you should play any face card, and any two suited cards"), but sadly got no great hands to take advantage of them with. i ended up winning about $5. only one big hand, which was from a girl who just decided to go all aggro with 2-8 off-suit, nothing paired with no draws. it was awesome. she bluffed all the way through and put a huge bet in at the end to scare me but i actually had a decent hand, so i took the pot.
anyway.
some guy in an online poker room is trying to get my messenger nickname so he can call me. an ONLINE CHAT ROOM. all he knows about me is that i live in west hollywood (they put that by your little nickname), and even that i could have lied about. fuckin weirdo.
last night i went home and played more poker while tipsily watching TLW. i hadn't seen a single episode this season, since i've been staying with my mom mostly, so i started from the beginning. i think i watched, like, 4 or 5? i think this season is much better than last season. the characters are still a little cartoony and inconsistent (what, helena's all friendly and reasonable now?), but it's more interesting, and they're not quite as flat. and i'm sure all the people bitching about how they are all glammy lesbians are happy with the introduction of moira. also, carmen is really hot. really fucking hot.
ayumi and i went to see quidam last night. it was opening weekend in long beach. i was excited to go see it because quidam was the first cirque show i ever saw, and i have been in love with it ever since -- while i also love the other cirque shows i've seen, none ever surpassed quidam for me. part of me wondered if i'd built it up too much in my head, but no, last night i fucking loved it. i no longer wonder if i liked it the most because i saw it first -- ayumi also added that she liked this one more than mystere, even though she saw mystere first and loved it. the music is just phenomenal, and weighty, and emotional... i spent a lot of time in college listening constantly to the quidam soundtrack. oh, and i have to say, i love the angry clown with boxing gloves.
anyway. so that's something fun i've done (to counteract my last entry). things have been pretty good this last week or so (especially compared to the preceding week and a half). i tried a new tapas restaurant, which had fantastic sangria, went drinking at hamburger mary's karaoke night (learning words to obscure yet surreally-awesome songs such as "cosmic girl") and am actually winning sort of consistently at poker. i play poker tonight with real people for the first time since i started studying up on the game. i'm a little nervous, but hopeful i can pick up some pocket change.
of course, the overriding thing making this week good is that my mom is doing very well. she still feels tired and uncomfortable (and her hair has started going), but attitude really makes all the difference -- my sister and i have been trying to give as much positive energy as possible, and she's been up and about and going shopping with my sister, and overall just in a good mood. it's great.
so that's my life. in the overarching view of things, it's shitty, but for what we've got to work with, we're doing alright.
ways NOT to support someone who is facing a poor prognosis and going through chemotherapy:
1. "oh no... you feel terrible... it's because the chemotherapy is poison, and it's killing your healthy cells... it's bad for you... it makes you sick..."
2. "people only take chemotherapy because they feel like they have to because everyone does it and they don't know what else to do. chemotherapy just slowly kills you. doctors wouldn't even dare tell you what their success rate is because everyone just dies."
3. "western medicine is close-minded and doctors don't want you to know about alternative therapies that can heal you without hurting your body because they want to make money."
is it just me, or is it not the most intelligent path to push alternative therapies that are shown to be completely unsupported by clinical data (often because all the attempted clinical trials failed, not because they were not conducted) or any scientific basis within just a few minutes of online research on independent websites? is it really so strange to think that perhaps, just perhaps, the doctor who claims to be able to cure people with advanced cancer and only a couple months to live might have, say, biased or somewhat unreliable information on his website? does it really make you think something sounds credible when it's backed up by: "Professor Fairbanks’ scientific presentation above is pure truth and scientific without error. Any clinician who challenges this should start all over with his education — in high school biology."
i hate people. but on the other hand, one of my favorite new sites is http://www.quackwatch.org.
tinto verano con limon.
i know, i know, poor man sangria. i continue getting made fun of when i make such concoctions at our work happy hour. i swear to god, it was everywhere in spain. of course, so were mullets. so maybe that doesn't make it okay.
mmm... alcohol and getting tipsy by yourself in the middle of the night... (oh, maybe i'm not supposed to cheer about that last one to other people. i'm really not all that buzzed. a glass and a half of wine. seriously. that's it.)
yeeaaaahhhhhhhh...
i'm wiggin'. i had an inordinately shitty day. BUT, i mixed myself a little cocktail once my mom went off to bed, and i feel MUCH better now. i sooo am not equipped to deal with this shit, and it's just not going to fucking go away or get better.
ugh.
i have won $6.50 in poker this evening. this is what i have to hold on to.
goodnight.
this has been a hard week. my mom has been feeling terrible, and i've continued racking up my sleep debt. it's also gradually sinking in that this is not going to go away (though emotionally, i'm still mostly in denial -- but then it irritates me because i recognize that saying i'm in denial means that all my "it'll be okay"s that i say to myself aren't true). i'm going to spend a couple nights at my place and go out with some friends so that i can pull myself out of it a little bit and keep myself sane.
oh, and i finally stopped hemorrhaging money at partypoker. in the second book i've been reading on isaac's recommendation, it explains how a lot of people start losing when they learn a little about poker because it shifts them from loose/passive or loose/aggressive to tight/passive, but how they need to learn to be tight/aggressive (i swear, i'm just talking about poker). this made me feel better because i was getting all pissed off at the losing.
anyway. i have to go back to work.