I am feeling a bit cursed right now, as well as a bit of deja vous. It’s the first week of classes at R-University, and I’m coming down with a cold. I knew it was coming on this weekend, and try as I might to fight it with vitamin C, zinc and rest . . . I woke up feeling horrible this morning. I am so glad I planned an easy first week, with a movie for the second day of class (knowing half of them wouldn’t have books yet and half wouldn’t read anything yet). By Friday I don’t know how much of a voice I’ll have to speak with, as I’m raspy now.

Next week after Labor Day M-University starts up. I should hopefully be feeling better by then. Sadly it looks like I’m gunna be sick for my birthday weekend. WTF Baby Jesus! This happened to me last year too on my birthday. I caught some bug and just felt yucky all day. Grrrrr! Not that I had plans to do anything, but still.

So I had originally been planning to bring Facebook sometime after next week, which is when I go back to work, as well as my birthday. However I realized today that I was surviving without it just fine (and Twitter too). I thought maybe it would be a good idea not to race back into the addiction. I also hung out with some school BFFs, and they too had since pretty much given up on the thing (one had gone offline as well).

Following up on a previous posting, I did finally bite the bullet and book a cruise. Well I should say I put a deposit down on one. I, and friends, have till the end of October to decide if we will go. The boat I wanted was filling up, and I was afraid the price would just keep going up at this point (which it was when I booked it).

So the date the final payment for the cruise is due is October 27th . . . Which in fact is 2 months from now. I’ve decided that this is “the date” to aim for on all fronts. I had said I wouldn’t book a cruise till I defended, and there was a reason for that, aside from it being a reward. If I defend anytime before January 21st (or whenever the Spring semester starts), I do not have to pay another semester of tuition. If things dragged out, I might not be able to go on vacation in lieu of defending.

For me defending before that date is a must on many levels. First, I really don’t want to go into another new year with this over my head, I want to be done! Second, I’m tired of tuition! I don’t know if I’ve ever stated it, but I did not take out loans to put myself through school. I worked and saved to pay everything on my own, including having to fund my own research (cause I didn’t get initial grants I applied for, and didn’t want to wait around to try again a year later).

Therefore, October 27th is the date. I want a defense date set by then (or at least a projected one). This means getting the final draft done and in tip-top shape. For once I am actually feeling good about things. I just came off another 2 week writing camp and am feeling really good about where things are, and where I can be by that date. Make no mistake, it will take hard core discipline, and I might not be having much fun at all the next two months However usually when I sit down to write and edit, I am overcome with panic attacks and/or get frustrated. I amassed far too much data for my dissertation, probably in hindsight enough for 2 of them. Dealing with this, and the fact that I’m a perfectionist, hasn’t been fun But right now I feel like I’m over the hump, and I am managing it all pretty well. I just have to continue this feeling when I go back to work (luckily for once I’m not teaching a new class, so I’m hoping it will be easy).

Perhaps I will consider October 27th as the date for my return to Facebook too? Or perhaps I should say the latest point I’ll return to it. Here is hoping final drafts get turned in, approved and dates set far before then

Anyways, right now? I’m off to do a little more writing, then tonight to see the Scissor Sisters in concert! I do in fact feel like dancing too

So I am making a bigger post on my earlier post about deleting Facebook/Twitter and the like, which was just posted quickly by me during one of my many frantic moods

….. Okay so basically I had intended to write out all that has been going on and stressing me out, but it’s too much, it will come off as too whiny, and you don’t need to hear it all. Basically same shit different day . . . dissertation writing stress, living off saving stress, upcoming going back to work stress . . . add in the insane heat waves this summer which have just been migraine inducing as well as sitting around and gaining back way too much weight . . . yes I’m a barrel of laughs right now. There is also vacation stress, as whether we go on a vacation in January is yet again up to me. Part of me knows I’ll need a break come January (and I did have a great time last year), the other part of me knows I don’t want that on my credit card bill right now. I’ve been monitoring prices and right now they are going UP, so here is hoping they go back DOWN later on. Oh and then there is John having to work to 9-10pm every other night as well, so I never see him anymore.

So basically all this stress ends up leading to me breaking down and/or blowing up . . . and this last time I went and destroyed all my social networks. I deleted Twitter, Facebook as well as all the check-in apps like Gowalla and Foursquare too.

In part, I realized if I’m gunna be nuts online and vent on these places, I don’t need complete strangers knowing I’m nuts. Twitter/Facebook (because it’s easy to link them) are just too easy to go to and post a quick rant. The blog still takes time . . . signing in, writing the post, proofing it, etc . . . Twitter/Facebook it’s basically just bitch’n'go really. I decided 1) I don’t need to just be using these things as a bitch fest, cause nobody wants to read that and 2) I have way too many people on them I have no idea who they are, so they don’t need to know my private biz-nass.

So I just went on a deletion frenzy I guess I should have just deleted people off my lists . . . but somehow at the time I thought this was easier. I know people loved the twitter feed on the blog, but the problem is for it to work properly with the blog, your twitter account needs to be open. That means anyone can sign up and follow you, and unless you take the time to go in and block them . . . they know your biznass. Also for many people Twitter has seems to lost its appeal. The people I got on there to start following don’t use it as much anymore, and most of the updates I see anymore are people spamming 10 news article/links every hour.

As for Facebook . . . well before Twitter/iPhone I never really updated my facebook much. It was too much trouble. I also just approved anyone who asked to be my friend, even if I didn’t really know them, so now I have 300 friends and probably only can really identify who 50 of them are . . . 25 of which I’ve probably actually met in real life.

While my twitter (and 4square etc) accounts got irretrievably deleted, I did save Facebook from utter destruction. I just have too many childhood and obscure friends I’ll never be able to find again on there (though I’m an easy google if they need to find me, the benefit of years of the soap page). So at some point my Facebook will be back. However I’ve decided I need to take a hatchet to my Facebook. I need to go through my friends list and if I don’t recognize the name – - – DELETE! I also need to make lists of trusted friends and general friends, so I can decide who sees what. I need to learn to deny people’s friends requests if I don’t know who they are, and not be afraid to delete/block people – which so far I’ve never done to anyone. However if I’m posting sensitive and personal stuff, I don’t want strangers seeing it!

On the upside, my blog has gotten a lot more attention without Facebook and Twitter

PS Monster Mania this weekend! So I should be having some fun

Once again I found myself twittering tonight, then very angry.

Twitter and Facebook both permanently deleted tonight.

Not returning.

Fly away bird, fly fly away . . . it does not return . . . . *clap clap clap*

PS, who knew it actually was possibly to permanently delete your Facebook! It is!

*PS UPDATE* I am writing a longer post to address this one more in detail What is gone, what is saved, what needs to be changed big time before I can go back to it. However as usual, I’m multi tasking a million things right now, and a friend is coming over soon and we might be going out . . . some fun will do me good (especially since the last two times I tried to plan going out, they all fell through)

I don’t know why my photos keep getting turned sideways, but tilt your head to the left

I’m now getting lots of sunflowers. Unfortunately they are attracting a lot of bees too. Within a few days my pretty sunflowers have been torn apart by bees it seems. Grrrr! I am still hoping to grow them again next year though. Next year I’ll make sure to start a lot of seedlings inside in the spring.

I’m also finally getting some red tomatoes. I have two almost ripe, and many on the way. I only picked medium sized ones for the Topsy Turvys, so nothing too huge (like beefsteaks).

Let’s see . . . it looks like Sunday will be a fun night out on the town! I did get out last Tuesday too with some friends. We just bar hopped. As it was mid week, it was dead . . . and odd in most places. Lots of Karaoke . . . bad Karaoke! Sunday however is 80s night at a local club. Ooo Ooo! So I’ll hopefully get some good photos. It almost makes me wanna revive Twitter and Facebook.

BTW, I’m still on a break from those two social services. I get emails every other day from people wondering where my profile has gone to. It’s vanished, like David Copperfield into the Great Wall of China! I tried going back on Twitter a few times, but then read things that made me pissy and left quickly. Again, maybe one day in the future I’ll be back, we’ll see. I’m shocked I’ve made it this long actually!

So the past few days have brought the threat of severe storms. I decided to take some photos of my gardens, in case they get ravaged by mother nature.

The Zinnias have really come around out front . . . and no more evil garden muncher either!

The sunflowers need water and are drooping a bit. I hadn’t watered them much because every day it’s been looking like rain. I finally watered them today though.

My tomatoes are getting big and green, I just wish they’d turn red. I don’t want to be making fried green tomatoes for the rest of the season. The eggplants however are exploding to the point I’m having to freeze them because I’m getting more than I care to eat.

Yeah I know I was gunna post something other than garden updates I’ve been getting a lot of email and comments as to where facebook/twitter went. I’ve been taking a break from both. I’ve just been VERY stressed out, and probably will continue be for the next month as I race to get a lot of work done. So I just decided I didn’t need Twitter/Facebook around right now where it is far to easy to send out bitchfest tweets/updates. With the blog I actually have to log in, compose, then publish. However I have been neglecting the blog, not on purpose though. I’ve just been busy.

Oh I did get my brand new 26 dollar La Tar Jay bookshelf fully filled with all my games and DVDs.

P.S. Monster Mania in about 2 weeks! I’m not going to skip this one either like I did with the one in March. A good time will be had!

So before I headed off to Virginia, I had moved all the potted flowers I worked on growing to the barnyard area so they’d be easier for John to water, everything in one place. Yeah, unfortunately some rodent creature also decided to make them into a tasty treat. Seriously? My growing plants/flowers are more appetizing than a field of growing plants and veggies? It’s like shoplifting from KayBee when Toys’R'Us is nextdoor! I was FURIOUS! So I had to cart all the pots, some giant, back out to the front yard where they first started. What sucked was the gobbler decided to choose the day after I transplanted a lot of them from the larger containers to smaller ones, to keep the larger containers from being over crowded. I’m pretty sure it’s a groundhog. So far since they’ve been out front, no real problems. I just have to see if they heal from being chomped so much. I am planning to plant stuff in the ground next year, once the ground is cleaned up and ready of course. I just decided to give some potted flowers test runs this year.

The front porch, which you can see has been stripped of ivy, and the ivy stripped the paint. Also the front bushes, the bricks I’m gunna eventually use to line the garden area then mulch.

Thanks to the heatwave, the sixth one we are on now, I basically stopped doing yard work. It was just too nasty. I figured let the heat kill all the weeds, overgrowth and crud; it will make it somewhat easier for me. I’ve sense moved my focus indoors. Most people never realize unless I show them that we actually have a second bedroom downstairs, aside from the Wonder Woman room. It however has become a storage nightmare. The Wonder Woman room is too honestly. I can make it look nice, just don’t open the drawers or look in the closet

Even opening the door to the room is a nightmare . . . . don’t because the cats like to rush in here and then it’s a bitch to get them out!

I have wanted to organize it and the other room for YEARS now. In fact I had told John over the winter we were to get things in order . . . it didn’t happen. So I went out and bought a second bookshelf. I had wanted, and blogged, about a book shelf for the living room/dining room corner for awhile. Especially during the Christmas season to put the never ending nativity on. I never got around to it, and never wanted to make the purchase. I had been eyeing a nice looking one at Le Tar Jay for a year, but then I saw the cheap 26 dollar version. 120 dollars for the exact same thing, just with molding to make it look pretty . . . or 26 dollars for the plane jane version. Hmmmmm. Yeah if I’m paying over 100 dollars for furniture then assembly should not be required! I went cheap.

John of course did not like the cheap. Ewwwww pressed wood! Ewwwww! Well the 120 dollar one was pressed wood too, just like anything from the Swedish Superstore would be. I told him he was welcome to go out and buy something nice and fancy if he wanted. He also complained that I wanted to stack it with DVDs and videogames. Currently they are separated and either on an bookshelf in the Wonder Woman room, or in several different drawers in the TV cabinet. It can be a bitch to go searching for what I want, but John’s point is “they are hidden away rather than on display, which makes us look like grown ups.”

Well first, the only people who see inside our house are my friends. They look through these same things as much as I do, so I feel they’d appreciate the organization Second, who cares what the inside looks like when the outside looks the way it has for years Third, John is the King of Clutter and has no room to talk here really, cause I know I’ve blogged about his mountain sized piles of unopened mail that cover his desk. They get so bad that I end up having to go through it all and throw out (sorry recycle) countless dollars worth of unread magazines he subscribes to. I just glanced over there right this minute and their are packages on the floor and stacks on the desk I can see. Pfffft!

I told him that I would eventually move the book case out of the living room (though I might need another for Christmas!) and into one of the other rooms. However before those rooms can be cleaned, shit needs to be put in order! I want to put the DVDs/Videogames in the living room, use the Wonder Woman Room bookshelf for actual books, and the TV cabinet for CDs (which again are ALL over this house). From there I can begin dealing with the closets and drawers (which ALSO have CDs, videogames, old computer components). I’ve bought a few plastic bins for some of this stuff. The drawers which hold a good number of my clothes are actually collapsing. I need a new set of drawers honestly and soon. The ones I’m using now? “Pressed wood furniture” from Ikea . . . that belonged to John . . . yeah . . . . grown up stuff

My eventual goals for the two rooms, probably not to be fully realized till next year cause I only work on them in spare time, are to use the cluttered room as a guest room and turn the Wonder Woman room into an office and if needed a guest room. There is a pull out couch bed in the cluttered room I’d move into there.

As for other stuff, the second boot camp begins in four weeks and runs two weeks up until the start of the fall semester, when I go back to teaching. It’s my last hurrah of getting a bunch of stuff done and in order. The jobs for fall look good, 2 classes, both the same class, both I’ve taught before. I had tooled with changing the books, but killed that idea. I have the lectures and class done as is, I don’t have the time or desire at this point to change it and all the lectures. Yeah I’ll tweak them, but I don’t have to rewrite them. Then 2 classes at least in the spring, hoping to get one more.

So at 5:06am, a 3.6 earthquake hit the DC metro region, with the epicenter in Rockville, MD. I am home in Virginia at the moment . . . . and slept through the whole thing! We’ve only had one other minor quake in the region, and it was so long ago that I can’t remember if I felt it or not These aren’t California sized quakes mind you. My mom said the whole house shook and it felt like a tank went down the street. A good clap of thunder can do that too.

My mom said the dogs went nuts about 45 minutes before the quake. Demanded to go outside, sniffed the ground all over. When they finally came in, moments before the quake hit, they went to alert again.

I can’t believe I slept through it! I’m so effin pissed! I know, weird, I wanted to be in an earthquake. Again this isn’t some 2012 or California type one, though we are on a major fault line here on the East Coast. Most don’t realize that, and one day we might get a big one and several of our cities will be in big trouble as most buildings aren’t built with earthquakes in mind.

I finished sweeping and clearing off the patio this morning. Tried to power spray the dirt away and really clean it, but it’s not working too well. Ending up having to just shovel the mud film left after I sprayed. I set up the fountain again. Poor Pan got knocked off long ago and the fountain filled with dirt and crud. I’m amazed it still works, but Pan has suffered a serious leg injury . . . . poor guy.

As you can see I have my grill out to grill this weekend. Happy Fourth everyone! I’m actually grilling tonight. Unfortunately here it’s going to be 97 degrees on the fourth and 99 on Monday and Tuesday. Not sure how many people will actually brave that to go to Philly to see fireworks. We’re not! I’m hoping John gets off work early enough tomorrow and he’s not too tired that we can go out to eat and see the fireworks from the parking lot after. That’s what we did last year if I recall.

Oh and to show that once upon a time, our yard did actually look really nice . . . . a photo from six years ago. Princess playing in the flowers. I think this is actually the day I brought her home, or very shortly after.

So last night I watched this movie “The Final.” Honestly I wasn’t expecting it to be good, because it’s part of this “After Dark Horror Fest,” similar to the “8 Movies To Die For” series of indie horror flicks that never make it to the theaters. Usually there is a reason, they are fairly bad. This one I was surprised by! I think however the subject had a lot to do with it.

I normally don’t go in for torture movies, but that is exactly what this is, on many levels. I also admit to FFing a few scenes cause I couldn’t watch. This movie could probably best be described as “Saw” meets “Heathers.” The story centers around a group of kids at a high school, the outsiders that everyone picks on . . . . tortures you might say. They decide they’ve had enough and plot their revenge, inspired by a history lesson. They invite all the cool kids, and the kids who stood by while the cool kids tortured them, to a cabin in the woods where a party has been planned. The kids arrive and promptly drink drugged drinks. When they wake up they are all chained to the floor in the center of this cabin, the outsiders are dressed in ghoulish costumes and begin the torture. They tell them off the bat, “We won’t kill you, we’ll just make you wish we did.”

Like I said, the movie is a torture movie, but on several levels. The torture bullied kids go through, and the physical torture they inflict upon their tormentors. You really want these kids to get away with it, but things of course get out of hand, and you know there is no way they’ll get away with it . . . yet you still have a little bit of hope they do. The end however is as fitting as the moral of the whole movie. It touches on mainstream societies need to basically ignore this problem of bullying, to cover it up, to try and pretend it doesn’t exist or isn’t the problem it really is.

If it wasn’t so violent, it’d be good mandatory viewing for all high school students. Then perhaps the majority of asshole kids wouldn’t grow up to be asshole adults. Though there will always be assholes in the world, and they’ll be the ones who when they die the only thoughts about them are “good riddance.”

For me this movie came at the perfect time. For months I’ve had this little asshole coming to my blog leaving nasty homophobic comments, like I have AIDS or I’m a deviant and I need to stop molesting children. I am not dumb, I know where he came from, I tangled with him on NJ.com back in December. Since then I guess he’s decided to gay cyber-stalk me on my blog. He reared his ugly head again last night after months of being gone with his idiotic comments. I turned the shoutbox off for awhile cause unlike him, I had better things to do on a Friday night than sit here on my blog banning him over and over as he keeps trying to get back on. I put the box back up this morning, but may just remove it all together honestly since only my mom seems to use it anymore But anyways after I turned it off, I watched this movie and felt a lot better. Karma is a bitch to assholes. In the end, it always gets them!