Stay On the Sunny Side

Today's been pretty much the first sunny, slightly warm day since winter began!  Ack, it's just so pretty that my heart skips a beat.  Summer is not far away, my friends!

8D

Last Monday was a holiday, so of course it meant working a 10 hour shift at Savers.  But good news!  I've just been hired on at Zupas, a sandwich/panini (I dare you to spell that right without looking it up), soup, and salad place.  It was really shocking because the girl interviewing me didn't know she had an interview with me, and I thought that the person who contacted me (who works at another store) was supposed to be the interviewer.  But the girl did the interview anyways, and it turns out she likes me, and we both play volleyball (I totally want to play in an outdoor tournament with her this summer), and so she hired me on!  I have a feeling working there is going to be really demanding but fun.

Also, the volunteer coordinator at the zoo told me I can finish up my animal handling training in April, no problem.  So I won't have to restart from the beginning like I was afraid I might have to!  I look forward to working with these beautiful animals and the animal-nerd-o people like myself~.

I can hardly wait for summer to come!

-Crimson

Writing-related: I got a new story idea, wrote the first chapter, and I'm super super excited for it.  Now, how to once again make time to write...?

I Killed A Man... With Dis Thumb

Uh, yeah... so I played Halo for the first time a couple days ago.  And I killed a guy.  On the opposite team.  Yusss.  (Okay, so I managed to kill people on my own team on several occasions, and I killed my little brother's character more than once, but that's not important, right?  Hey, I only played for about fifteen minutes.)  Yeah, I probably won't play it much.  My problem was that you constantly have to change where you're looking, which gets in the way of taking out the opponents.  Really annoying, but hey, family time with my little brother is always good, right?

Better news:  I am in a Volleyball 1 class.  I expected it to be pretty basic, pretty slow, let's-relearn-how-to-pass-for-the-fifteenth-time kind of speed.  And while we did re-learn how to pass the ball, the teacher of this class shocked me right down from my head to my yellow sneakers when he told us that we were going to learn to jump serve today.  Jump serve.  He hasn't even re-taught us how to set or how to hit, but he had us learn how to jump serve.

Just for clarification: only a few girls on a high school varsity team can jump serve.  Jump serves are more of a college-level volleyball skill.

I knew the theory behind jump serves, but the way he taught it and the practices he had us doing had me jump serving before I realized I was jump serving.  How cool is that?  I am stoked.  I can't wait to use it in a real game.

Best News: I got my car back, fixed and drive-able.  The guy who fixed it is my HERO.  Not many people would be willing to fix a wrecked car for free in the three coldest months of the year.  He's my home teacher, and he's flipping amazing.  He deserves all the sugar cookies the world has to offer.

I'm so incredibly grateful to have it back.  It's a bit daunting to be on the road again, but I'll be careful.  With any luck, I won't have to crash another car for many, many years.  The first thing I'm going to do with my car is drive it to places that are hiring, since I'm not getting hardly any hours at my work.  Wish me luck!  And if you see any job openings, send a message my way!

~Crimson

Magical Girl Sweater Contest

Ta~da!  My entry for confessionsofamagicalgirl.blogspot.com's Magical Girl Sweater Contest.  Not one of my finer pieces of art, but I like the concept of it, which is all that counts.  I like the simplicity of it.  I chose the dark blue fading to white because blue is my favorite color, but moreover because in winter you get the dark blue of the night sky that contrasts with white snow.  The diamonds on the neckline represent ice crystals/icicles found in winter.  This was super fun, thanks for hosting the competition, Mew Kayla!

At Least I Can Write About This Authentically

Yesterday was the last day of finals.  It also happens to be the day I woke up to intense agony.  No, not the I've-been-studying-myself-to-death pain, but the pain of my body being on fire (especially by my bladder and kidneys), my stomach roiling with nausea, and an acute stabbing feeling in the right side of the back.

This was about six thirty in the morning.  My mom handed me two ibuprofen, which I puked up about fifteen minutes later.  And continued to puke, at fifteen-minute intervals.  The sad thing was that it felt good to upchuck, because then I wasn't feeling the pain in my back.  My mom thought it was a kidney infection and my dad thought it was a stone, but we'd have to take me to the doc either way.

Luckily for me, I got to wait three and a half hours to be taken anywhere.  My dad had to be at home because some guy was coming to fix our broken garage door, and my mom had to go to first period of class and arrange for a sub for the rest of the day.  On a scale of one to ten, I started at a pain level of eight.  It went up by one number every hour.  The only thing that helped at all was to pace around the house between throwing up. It was all I could do to not scream from the pain, and/or throttle my dad for not driving me to the flipping hospital already.

Finally, my mom and I went to the Instacare place in Provo.  On the TV was Tinkerbell, Secret of the Wings.  Watching that helped a little.  When the doctor got in, he asked if I wanted my mom to be there for some 'invasive questions' he was going to ask me.  He really should've been more blunt, because I was in immense pain and not reading into things.  I thought he was going to ask about how many times a day I use the restroom.  Instead he was asking 'might you be pregnant' and other such nonsense.  'Are you sure?' he asked twice.  Seriously, I think I would know if I was pregnant.  Then he made a joke about how we were celebrating the only women to get pregnant without doing 'it' in all of history.  It took me about two minutes to figure out through the pain that he meant Mary.  Seriously, I was dying here, and he was cracking jokes?  I didn't like this doctor.

Finally he left, and a nurse came in with a shot for pain meds.  I'd thrown up three times in the hospital room since I'd gotten in, so there was no way I'd be able to keep any pills down.  The nurse told me it would take about half an hour to kick in.  That was the longest half-hour of my life.  The doc told us it was either an infection or a stone, he needed me to go to the radiology place and get scanned.  By the time we got to the radiology section of the hospital, I was downright cheerful.

I was no longer in pain.  That was all I'd wanted in the first place.  I nearly fell asleep at the radiology check-in place.  I almost fell asleep when I had to lay down on the bed-thing that they put you on to run you through the UV scanner.

It turned out to be a kidney stone, 2 millimeters large.  I was like, 'What?  I thought only older people got kidney stones.'  I was wrong.  Anyways, my kidney stone was half the size of a pencil eraser, and it was causing me so much pain?  Lame.  I got a nausea med prescription, and pain meds, and I was good to go.  We picked up Jack Frost from Redbox and got me a gigantic Slurpee to help pass the stone.  I caught a look at myself in the mirror at the store.  I looked pretty good for being in my PJs and having retched my heart out earlier.

All I need is to pass the stupid stone, and I'll be pain-free again.  The only final I missed was for Creative Writing, which I'm kind of mad about.  All I would've been doing was reading part of my ten-page project and eating a bunch of awesome sweets.  I submitted my project through e-mail.

*Sigh*  I'm coming off the pain meds I took this morning, and I'm not feeling any pain, so maybe I have passed it now.  In any case, at least now I can give one of my characters a kidney stone and write about it effectively.  Please, friends, drink lots of liquids and if you feel the pain I've just mentioned, get yourself to Instacare, preferably without waiting hours.

Mahou Shoujo and My Laptop

So, my laptop has been on the brink of death for the last week.  Incredibly slow, as in I-take-five-minutes-to-load-one-page-and-only-if-it-pleases-me-foolish-mortal slow.  I pulled out my ipod today and found a tip to make my laptop speed up.  All I had to do was shut down my laptop, hold the left shift, option, and apple buttons down for ten seconds, and presto!  I had a laptop again.  It was like magic (mahou shoujo being its latin name).  I raced into the kitchen to inform my brother of this magical feat.  His response?  "That's the RAM, Kayla.  Resetting the RAM makes your computer faster," he explained in his best simplify-it-for-the-technologically-inept voice.

I disagree.

I think it's a magical girl team fighting an evil techno-mastermind inside my computer, and holding down those three buttons sent out an SOS to the magical girl team alerting them of my distress.

Wherever they are out there, I thank the magical girl team for their tremendous help.  I'll leave snickerdoodles out for you guys tonight; eat them at your pleasure.

~CrimsonRuin

Hey, Look! There Goes Everything

Whelp, there goes the plan to keep this blog entirely writing-related.  Eh, I will mourn that later.  The past two months have been incredibly hectic, with good and bad spots-- more bad than good, I am afraid.  Work destroyed me, and I may or may not have had a meltdown about my biology class, and then I may or may not have gotten into a car crash (went in to the chiropractor, he says I have the equivalent of a sprained neck, but it'll be entirely gone in 4-6 weeks.  It's fine, just really sore, and I can't do any 'strenuous' activity for the next two weeks.  :(  There go my volleyball and treadmill plans).

I was feeling pretty dumpy last week, BUT lest you think I have fallen into the pits of depression, I will say that I have not.  Well, I kind of did, for a little while.  However, I have decided that I will not be a victim.  So, I may have to walk to college and back, and depend on my parents for rides to and from work.  So, I may have to double my study time to freaking figure out the biology chapters.  I can, and will do it.

Because I.  Will.  Not.  Be.  A.  Victim.

With that, I reinforce my efforts to be cheerful, and act cheerful, and be cheerfully productive, and speak like I'm cheerful.

How am I doing?  I'm doing great.  I may be slightly behind in Nanowrimo (about 15,000 words behind) but I'm going to figure it all out, don't worry.

I'm not giving up yet.  ~Crimson

Hello Earth, I'm Still Here

Aaaaaaand of course, just as I'm about to write this post, all my words desert me and I want to fall asleep.  Even though it is the middle of the afternoon and this is completely ridiculous.

In my creative writing class, we are in the unit of images.  I already knew a lot about images, that they drive your work, but I did learn something new.  Summaries should have images in them.  Slides, which transition scenes, should also have an image and a passing of time.  I look forward to seeing more examples of slides and practicing with them, because in the past, most of my transitions were rough.  To avoid that, I usually just triple star in the middle of the page and start the next scene, so slides should really help!

My first college test came and went.  I'm in Biology 1610, and... I got a D-turned-C (thank you modified bell curve!) on the test.  Which sucked because I studied long and hard for the test.  I also have another test this week in the same class, so hopefully it goes better.  For my work, I told them four days a week or less, so hopefully I regain my sanity.  My hope is to, at the start of November, go down to working only three days a week... or find a less-demanding job.

So, yeah, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been busy (so busy.  And tired, but mostly busy).

-Crimson (and if I don't post again until November, you know why)

P.S. Nanowrimo is one month away, my friends.  PREPARE YOURSELVES!