Well, words are coming first because I feel woefully awful for not posting them over the weekend. Life's just been hectic with mom's car in the shop and having to coordinate our schedules. I haven't been home half as much as I would have liked to have been.

ennui \on-WEE\, noun:
A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.

Sitting in class had become so monotonous and unfulfilling that a permanent ennui had settled into her, to the point that she felt school had no purpose any longer.

virago \vuh-RAH-go; vuh-RAY-go\, noun:
1. A woman of extraordinary stature, strength, and courage.
2. A woman regarded as loud, scolding, ill-tempered, quarrelsome, or overbearing.

She found the orator to be a virago, worthy of admiration.

pestiferous \pes-TIF-uh-ruhs\, adjective:
1. Bearing or bringing disease.
2. Infected with or contaminated by a pestilential disease.
3. Morally evil or dangerous to society; pernicious.
4. Bothersome; troublesome; annoying.

Typhoid Mary was a pestiferous worker who made a lot of people sick. (Still waiting for that coffee to kick in....)

sine qua non \sin-ih-kwah-NON; -NOHN; sy-nih-kway-\, noun:
An essential condition or element; an indispensable thing.

As her life progressed, coffee became the sine qua non that allowed her to get to class on time everyday.


OH AND HEY PARTY CITY CUSTOMERS IF YOUR KID IS SHRIEKING AND YOU DO NOT REMOVE THE LITTLE MONSTER FROM MY REGISTER AREA I CANNOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR DAMN BRAT. I HAVE LITTLE NERVE FOR CRYING BABIES AND/OR CHILDREN AND I DISLIKE THEM EVEN WHEN THEY AREN'T MAKING NOISE. THNX FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION AND GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF MY STORE.

Grawr. I hate crying....things and yesterday was Super Baby Cry Day apparently. I had no idea. If I had, I would have called in sick. Haha...I hate kids.


Umm....Saturday I went to Osaka and the Museum of Fine Arts with Cindy. That was fun. I felt really lame though, but I always feel really lame when meeting new people. She had on the cutest Hello Kitty broach and I almost died of love when I saw it. She was so nice and gave me a cute Hello Kitty valentine and the most delicious strawberry jam filled strawberry cakes. I felt so bad that I hadn't taken her anything, but my brother raided my cupcakes! Oh well, it was his loss because I only shared Cindy's great little cakes with mom. XD Osaka was pretty good, but I felt kind of lame since I was absolutely starving, but my appetite mysteriously flew out the window a few moments before our food arrived. D: Then I was struggling to eat. Blech. My appetite's been weird lately. Afterwards we went to this supposedly cute cupcake shop. It wasn't as darling as either of us had been expecting, but the cupcakes were beautiful. They tasted good too, but not as good as they looked! XD

After that we went to the museum and checked out Miwa Yanagi's exhibit and Love Tokens. I didn't mind seeing Love Tokens again, because I absolutely love miniatures--I think I want to get one when I'm finally rich and famous. (Like that will ever happen!) I had been told by several people that I would love Miwa Yanagi's work and that I even looked like someone who had just stepped out of one of her photos. Now, I don't think I looked like I belonged in any of those pictures, but I did LOVE to nth degree her Fairy Tale series. Darwin said I would like it, and I did. Guess he knows me pretty well. I think what I liked most out of her Elevator Girls series though was the architecture in all of it. It really stole the lime light away from the elevator girls themselves. What I loved most of all was the Little Red Riding Hood. Talk about surreal. Blech...but that's not the word I want to use to describe it, I just can't think right now. Maybe it will come to me later?

Then we spent about twenty hours looking at the museum's library. Oh. My. God. Uh-Maze-Ing. I also got an idea on what to do my art history super-big paper on. :D That really eased my mind. Only trouble is I've got to get off my butt and get the art review that's due THIS WEEK done before I can justifiably begin work on that stupid research thing. BUT at least I know what I'm going to be doing.

And it just clicked that it is MONDAY. The art review is due TODAY. Damn. And I was doing so well in that fsking class. Better get started on that now then... D: Oh well...at least I for sure have time to do it. Writing papers is my THING. Good thing I noticed now rather than when he called to have the reviews in.

Chris Baty explains it best:

Dear Brave NaNoWriMo Participant,

Okay. The holidays are over, and it's time to get back to work.

Not actual work, mind you. Forget that. After NaNoWriMo, we all deserve at least another month before we head back to our cubicles and classrooms. Your bosses and teachers will understand.

No, I'm talking about exciting work. I'm talking about the fact that there's a beautiful new year on the horizon, and it's time for us to get up to a beautiful new kind of trouble together. Which is why I'm writing to invite you to take part in NaNoWriMo's second annual Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge.

The Challenge works like this: All of us come up with a list of things that we've long dreamed about doing, making, or being. These can be hard-nosed acts of practical skill-acquisition, such as becoming a ninja and learning to kill people with our eyebrows. Or they can be fantastical notions such as going back to school and getting a degree in business administration.

The adventuresome path or paths you choose are completely up to you. Last year, some BFS participants used the challenge to complete a revision of their NaNoWriMo novels and write their first scripts through Script Frenzy. But many of ventured farther afield. We finally learned to speak some Spanish (that was me). We took classes in watercolor painting, started blogs, and learned to tango. We mended fences with estranged family members, explored the Amazon in dugout canoes, hiked the Great Wall of China, and made daunting leaps from soul-snuffing jobs to careers closer to our hearts.

To take part in the challenge, you just need to post at least one big, fun, or scary goal for yourself in this forum. Then, come January 1, we'll roll up our sleeves, pack a lunch and a change of underwear, and set out into the big, fun, scary unknown together.

We'll use this BFS forum to post reports on our progress and setbacks, locate fellow adventurers who can help us reach our goals, and generally whoop it up in true Office of Letters and Light fashion as we move a few items on our lifetime to-do lists from "someday" to "done that."

Also, our great moderators Sammy and Mortaine have set up helpful Resources threads for all sorts of goals. If you need any advice or just want to chat about your adventures in those specific domains, please post there! And if you're an expert in any of those areas, please drop by and offer your insight and encouragement!

Anyone who completes at least one of their adventures before December 31, 2008 will a glowing Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge winner's certificate to remind them of their feat. To claim your certificate, just email tavia@nanowrimo.org with "BFS 2008 Winner" in the subject line. We'll have the certificates ready to email out at the end of 2008. If you were a 2007 winner and haven't gotten your certificate yet, just send Tavia an email with "BFS 2007 Winner" in the subject line.

What will you attempt in 2008? I can't wait to find out.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

As for myself, my goals for 2008 are:

• complete a mail order Klingon course
• completely rehaul and reorganize my room, getting rid of the many, many, many old things and making way for the many, many, many newer ones
• volunteer for a non-profit project/organization
• find 10 things my brother and I have in common
• stop automatically turning people down when they call to invite me out
• win NaNoWriMo this year
• visit at least 90% of the museums in Houston and Humble
• make a collage
• make a skirt
• vote
• buy two pairs of brown shoes
• do something semi-permanent and spontaneous to my hair
• document everything I eat as part of my little social experiment
• visit my friend in Austin before semester's end

Also, I'd like to take this time to pimp megan_eating, a new lj I started out as a bit of an experiment. After watching countless shows on the Discovery Health channel about fat people I realized that one of the main things I heard leaving their mouths was, "I just never realized how much I was eating" or something to that extent. Therefore, I have created a theory--that by paying attention to what we stick in our mouths and shove down our stomachs, we can see how poorly we treat our bodies and can therefore take the first step to becoming healthy. So....for the next year, I will be documenting my every culinary move in a weird kind of social experiment so that I can see if it indeed works. I hope that by recording everything I eat, I see exactly how it is I am eating unhealthily rather than just that I am. Hopefully, this will help enable me to be healthier and to take better care of my body. Please share this idea with your friends blah blah blah and try it yourself--you'd be surprised at what you eat (insert more inspirational and guilt-making words).

Oh....aaaand:

( Slight Rant + OMG DRAMORZ!!!! )