Recap on Equinox: Summer 2008

The past three months have been full of turmoil, both for good and bad. A lot has happened that has changed some aspect of me as a person. On this equinox, I would like to take some time to recap.

The first big thing of note was dad's surgeries for cancer. It was really hard on us, but I think it brought me closer to a side of my family that I didn't really have a lot of contact with when I was younger. Getting to be around them and getting to know them has been great. I'm also glad that my grandmother kept her civility. At least we didn't have to deal with that. Dad has a new mass in his lymphatic tissue, and started a new chemo regiment yesterday. I'm convinced we have this beat, but somehow other family members and starting to do that "what's your final wish" kind of thing. I know it's important, but I don't like how they are making a huge issue out of it. I'm sure it can't be very encouraging for dad, so I am hopeful that I can keep that optimistic voice for him an let him know that he has people who know we're not done fighting.

My relationship with my husband has been very fragile over the summer. We split up briefly, but we have both been working on making things better. I can say that it's entirely worked, and lately things have gone back to negative, and I'm a bit in a state of unknown as to how I feel about us. I'm hopeful that the fall will prove victorious for us, and that we can get the knots untied.

So many things came out of my trip this summer to Texas. It has changed the way I see WoW and online relationships. It's also changed a lot of what makes me as a person online as well. Leaving thee old guild took a lot of thought, but I can honestly say I am glad to be gone. The way a couple people reacted to me leaving really showed their true ideas on how they thought of me, and honestly I don't want that sort of dark cloud around me. I was sad to leave all the deep friendships I had made, though. I'm hopeful that those people are willing to keep contact with me, as they really do mean a lot to me. I'm glad to be in the new guild. I'm completely content to be Laz to these people, and not Di. If something comes up and I make deeper friends, then I guess that's okay, but I am glad to keep my distance as far as it is.

I'm happy to have someone from IRL in the guild now. He's a very good friend of mine, and he really deserved to see higher level content. Having him in the new guild is tons of fun, and I'm glad he's made a new, drama free home with us. Maybe having him around will allow me to keep my distance from the other guild members. 

I'm almost done with Red Rocks, so this last push has been extra stressful. Because of what happened in Texas, I failed a class I really enjoyed and wanted to do well in. I was severely disappointed, but I am ready to move on and get done. Voice lessons are going swimmingly, and I am so glad to have a new accompainist! Gratz to you for making it happen! Voice was sketchy over the summer, also because of the trip, but I am ready to move forward and clean up these last couple semesters and really wow the department with my abilities.

So now, it being the first day of autumn, and tomorrow being my birthday, I'm kind of depressed. I think there are lots of reasons why, but I think a lot of it has to do with the current situation that some of these issues are in. So I am going to take out the rest of my birthday money that I have stowed in the bank and go be nice to myself today. I guess other than me being depressed, I have no reason not to. I hope everyone's autumn goes well. It's my favorite time of year, and I would really like to see some percipitation soon.

Chacan a son gout

I have no idea how to start this one, since I'm in a terrible mood, and there's really no positive way to get things moving, so I will just jump in, or maybe that was intro enough? *shrug*

So events of late. A good friend of mine who plays WoW recently switched servers to the one I am on. This is pretty cool because he's good at what he does and knows his class. However, I'm starting to see that he himself is a big of a drama llama, despite the fact that he left his onlt guild/server because of an overabundance of drama. I was lucky enough to get him into my raiding guild with no problem, I just hope to god he does't step on anyone's toes. That would be a nightmare. But it is really nice to have him around. We've all decided, after very bad ponderings of mine, that the 4 of us are all going to help each other get our epic flying mounts. He's one of those types that once he gets his mind set on something he's full throttle about it. So I am hopeful that I will have my epic flyer by the end of the week. Yay!

I've been drowning myself in my new main aria I am working on this semester. It's "Chacan a son gout" from the opera 'Die Fledermaus'. There is one video I have of it that I somehow keep watching over and over again. And I still haven't memerized the words somehow. Don't let the title decieve you. It's actually in German. It's pretty par for the opera to skip in and out from language to language, at least the productions I have seen. 

Wednesday is my birthday. I'm fucking miserable about it. I'm too broke to actually enjoy it, so yanno, whatevs. It'd be better if it just went away.

I guess that's about it.

What my ink means to me.

So today we were talking about body modification in class. I have two tattoos, one on the back of my neck, and one on my calf. To me, tattoos should have some sort of meaning. Like, when people just get a design to have one, it doesn't make sense to me. My tattoos have multiple meanings for me, and I wouldn't have them any other way. My brother wants to get a tattoo, and I am pretty sure I have talked him out of it for the reason that he can't come up with something he wants on his body that really has meaning. He talks about getting swords, certain symbols associated with gaming, etc. Every time I ask him what it means to him, all he can really tell me is, "well it looks really cool." I think that's great and all, but I don't think it really holds any meaning for him. I also think he's afraid of pain, but that always seems to be an underlying thing.

I have 2 tattoos. The one on my back I got after I turned 18. It's the Libra symbol with a metallic style color scheme. To me that tattoo is a symbol of "freedom with boundaries". When I left home, I was studying astrology, and I found I identify with my star sign, all the good and bad. The metallics are meant to make it seem unnatural, like it isn't all when I am born that makes me who I am. So it's kind of self-contradicting.

The one on my calf is a foot long rose. It holds multiple meaning for me as well. One, it's the cover of a Depeche Mode album. A few years ago, I went on a 2 year long Depeche Mode binge. That was when I really discovered my love for music and decided to pursue a career in it. It also shows my wedding to Jake. We had a ton of roses in our cerimony, and each of those also holds meaning in my tattoo. Also, I have the letters DM on either side of the rose. First, of course, stands for Depeche Mode. The second are my initials after my name changed. ^_^

Good morning, sunshine.

Happy Monday. I really should be in the shower and putting myself together instead of blogging. And here I thought this would be hard. 

So after my little emo spout and an evening with my brother-in-law, I feel a bit better. I scrambled to get two major things done this morning since I had to start over again on one and start anew on another. I completely scrapped the idea I had for my identity project. Thanks to my husband, I decided to keep the issues as shallow as possible. I am in no way feeling the need to be very deep right now, so I hope the final output will suffice. I made a power point presentation since I didn't want to print the masses of pictures and text I used to create what I am loveingly calling "the tangle of junk that somehow makes me interesting". For my essay, I regurgitated some sort of mess about social interractions on World of Warcraft. I was pretty glazed over when I wrote it, somewhere between half asleep and too hungry to care. But it's done. It's pretty dry. I know I can't read back over it right now, for fear that I'll fall asleep. First impressions, right. I already feel bad for the people who have to make sense of it. I hope I made it clear enough. Good enough for a workshop, I guess.

I wanted to go see Obama talk at Mines tomorrow, but it sounds like it's going to be a zoo, and I can't get anyone to go with me. I'm sure it will be on youtube in a day or so. That'll work.

No voice lessons tomorrow. That's two weeks in a row now. I should get a practise in with my pianist before I see her next week. I miss singing. :(

It's probably time to go throw myself at some running water. And there might be food in the near future too, hopefully something that won't give me heartburn.

Oh. Check this guy out too. I like him...  a lot. http://clueblogger.blogspot.com/ 

What do I say?

So, for my assignment I was going to do about self identity and who I am as a person has suddenly taken a big change. Initially, the best thing I could think of was directing my classmates throu my myspace page. I was honestly going to do that. It had about as much info as I wanted to give, and it was already done. Now... after seeing other people's projects, I wanted to do something different. So I have been re-doing my project. I was going to make a powerpoint presentation, actually add music and pictures to it, but I am having an extremely hard time doing it. Yeah, it's dug up all the same unhappy memories, and I can't seem to just brush them off. Since it's part of me, I feel obligated to add them. But I don't want to. I don't want to share these things with my classmates. I feel like everything I have worked to keep is suddenly just given to people who I may never have any sort of contact with. But I feel like if I just talk about singing, then that's more like me being superficial, like I'm an attention whore or something. That's not me. I have to present tomorrow, so time is running out. Oh, and I have an essay due tomorrow and I have no freakin clue where the assignment sheet went. I hate how I somehow keep doing this. I tell myself this is going to be the semester where I blow everyone away with my ability to do this whole school thing right, and I epic fail. I've been at Red Rocks for 4 years now, and I want desperately to move on. Yeah... maybe I should just give up now. Save myself the heartache and frusteration I always somehow end up in and just... go work at the dollar store or something. I'll just waste my mind and musical abilities and go run a cash register somewhere. Not like I'll even get the job, since I can't ever find one outside of the school anyway. Epic fail.

'You are your own person'

I want to talk about someone very special to me, because he never stops amazing me. My little brother is a stellar person. At the tender age of seventeen, he is so much more grown up than some people our mother's age. He's dealt with stress with grace, and treats people with the respect they deserve. Lately, something big has happened in our relationship, and the way he dealt with it deserves my praise. Let me summarize:

I play lots of World of Warcraft, and way back in the day, I also got him to play. There was a time when I quit playing, but he continued to. When I came back, I switched guilds. A guild is a social structure in wow like a club, where people who have similar in game goals get together to achieve these goals. He and I are both raiders, meaning we go out with large groups of people (10, 25, or 40 people) and attempt to conquer world and endgame bosses. Well, we were in a guild where we became good at playing our classes and raiding. This guild was very friendly, and most of them knew each other in real life. So this summer, I took him to Texas with me to meet some of these people. We had an amazing time, aside from me being sexually assaulted. I told the guild, but did not file a police report. The guild decided to keep it on the dl, which I was okay with. I didn't want to create a drama situation; I just wanted to move on. However, people stopped talking to me. I became paranoid that people were talking about me. I started to feel like everyone was his friend and not mine; I felt completely alienated from the people I liked. So I left the guild. Apparently, this pissed off the guild leader, and he accused me of "stealing loot and running to see higher level content". That was a load of shit, and he seems to be the only person who thinks this. Anyway, I joined a much better guild. They are friendly, but they keep their space. I think only one person knows my real name, which makes me feel safe. That way this sort of thing won't happen again. They are also in higher level content, which I do enjoy, but I feel like I'm missing out on the Tier 5 content

So yeah, about my brother. He's made a ton of friends in the old guild, but I know part of him wants to raid with me. He and I had a talk today (which caused me many deaths during Supremus :P) and he told me he wanted to leave. My new guild leader told me my brother could join, and so he was deeply contemplating it. Instead of jumping the gun and leaving the old guild, he talked to people about it, and thought about what his options were. He asked me when I wanted him to do, and I told him, "You are your own person. Just because I am here does not mean you have to leave your life behind. I'm still around, and your reasons other than that for leaving are small. That's your decision though, and I will not make it for you."

In the end, he stayed. I admire him deeply for that decision, and I am hopeful that whenever another decision like this comes up, that he will consider his gains and losses, and be his own person.

"It's unfortunate that you have to watch it."

I'm going to be honest. Watching even the first 10 minutes of McCain's speech made me feel kind of ill. I could almost see dollar signs floating around in the crowd. His voice almost sounds like Bush's, and it's kind of disconcerting. During his speech, the crowd couldn't STFU. There was one guy right by the microphone and he was, like the rest of them, a "hooting moron". Drool on the stage some more. And so what's up with that "respect Obama and his supporters" when he and his entire camp keep pulling out the mud. There have been a couple times when McCain has been decent, but it's like he's setting himself up to be honerable just to knock more down. Jeez. So if he's so much of a mavrick, how is he different from Bush? What's the difference between him and every other republicain?

So, it seemed to me that McCains speech was aimed at Military supporters. It might seem weird, but that's what I got out of it. It's like that's who he talked to the most. O_o His purpose was to prove that he's capable of... making it work? I guess.