Prepoceros

Tonight I have six minutes left to throw up a NaBlo post. I was going to post the second installment of my ski-trip journal, but it’s all the way across the room on the table, and I really can’t be bothered.

Instead I’ll quickly pass on this link to John Scalzi’s review of the Creation Museum. It’s long, but it’s worth the read. At least that’s what I think so far—I’m only a quarter of the way through it.

If reading isn’t your thing, he also has a Flickr photoset of 101 pictures. Look, now you can save yourself a trip to Kentucky.

Lately I’ve been watching Heroes at John’s place. We’re about halfway through the first season so far, and I have to say that it’s better than I expected. I knew the basic premise—people with secret superhuman abilities try to find each other and save the world—and it didn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d enjoy watching.

But wouldn’t you know it, I’m hooked. That’s what TV does; I shouldn’t be so surprised.

What does surprise me is that it hasn’t given me nightmares yet. At least one person’s head gets ripped open per episode, and half of the rest of the show is spent building up creepy, creepy tension. Maybe tonight will be my lucky night.

Hiro, by the way, is my total favorite. He rocks.

If you are stalking me attentive, you may remember that I mentioned having a partial theme for PoMo 2007. Now that November’s nearly half over, I figure it’s about time to roll that puppy out.

We’re having holiday guests from Europe this year, and before they get here we’re recarpeting the entire upstairs of the house, converting the stairs from carpet to hardwood, and like seventy gazillion other things. And when I say we, I mean my parents. My job was to sort through all the stuff that had accumulated in my old bedroom and pack it up or throw it out. The most onerous task was shuffling through the piles and piles of paper I’d kept from elementary school on up in search of the few gems I wanted to keep.

I chuckled to myself as I read some of those gems, and thus a blog theme was born.

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But not just any video editor, oh no. I’m looking for one that can import video clips. One that can do more than five operations in a row without crashing. One that can take a clip with sound in it and render it with the video and audio still synchronized. Crazy, I know.

I realize that maybe one of you will be half-interested in the content of this post. Maybe. But this is what I’ve been working on for most of the last two days, so this is what I’m writing about.

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Year three. Remember year one and year two? [Read the year one post if you have no idea what I’m talking about.] Walking into the Nutcracker Market feels like a time warp. The same booths in the same locations, the same free food, the same slice of upper-middle class Texas walking around in its glitter camo pants. The only thing that changes is the entry price: up a dollar every year.

My mom and I both wanted to take it easy this year, so we went after 5, when the tickets are half price. All the booths were still open, the free dips and spreads were still flowing, everything was good. We were there for about two hours, which I think is just enough preholiday shopping madness for me, especially since I’m still getting over this dizziness thing (I still had to stop once for a nice sit to steady the world again).

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There’s a big new-ish building on campus called “Science Building.” Now, I’m a science major, and as far as I know this building has existed all four semesters I’ve been here, but before today I’d never been inside. I wondered what mysteries lay within its walls that no one had bothered to tell a lowly undergrad like me about.

Today I got to go in. Not that I wasn’t allowed to before, but today I had a reason to. After one class I went back with the professor to his office (which was in the “Science Building”—who knew?) to pick up a test I’d missed getting back when I was out sick.

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Tonight I am sleepy. I’m sleepy a lot these days. I don’t know if it’s related to the dizziness. The sleepiness makes my sentences simpler.

I went to school today. I think today was the right day to go back to school. I felt dizzy a few times, but not sick enough to want to go home. I think I’ll even be able to start driving myself around again tomorrow. I don’t want to jinx it, though, so we’ll see.

John is reformatting my computer tonight. I’m getting a whole new Windows and a whole new Linux. Well, the Linux is all new, or at least updated; Windows is the same old XP, but we’re clearing out all the crap I’ve accumulated lo these two years and starting over. Minimalism, you know.

By gosh, I think this is long enough to be a post now. I’ll stop typing.

. . . feeling better? . . . a post about dizziness? Yes.

Remember when I used to write “reviews” of Starbucks food? Yeah, I quit. No particular reason. This post will be like those, except much shorter and even less funny. I’ve been drifting in and out of sleep for the last hour.

This afternoon I felt well enough that I dared to drive myself to the doctor to get my stitches out. My mom could have done it, but she was working at the elections all day, and I’m glad I didn’t have to bother her.

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Staying with my parents lets me in on a segment of pop culture I usually only read about: television.

Saturday night I caught Brian Williams on SNL. I know he was trying to loosen up, but he really does talk like an anchorman all the time. Barack Obama’s surprise appearance made me throw up in my mouth a little.

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Wherever this dizziness is coming from, it seems to want to stick around a bit longer. I thought I was making slow progress toward normalcy—Thursday I felt horrible, Friday I felt pretty crummy, Saturday it was off-and-on, Sunday morning I felt okay again—then WHAM! All of a sudden, as I was fixing to leave the house, something snapped and the woozies came rushing back, accompanied by a unpleasant cold tingle under my skin.

The vertigo got variously better and worse during the day but never went away entirely. During dinner out at a Mexican restaurant, I started feeling terrible again—dizzy, nauseated, the whole bit. I asked John to take me back to my parents’ house, instead of to my apartment as we’d planned, where I got a little bit sicker. Eventually the wave passed, and now I’m okay enough to type, though I’d rather not sit up.

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