Meveny's Musings

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:52:37 GMT

....and now my car blew up!

The engine quite literally went "Boom" and it is no longer functional or fixable. The amount it would take to fix it is roughly the amount necessary to buy a new one.

I need this car to get to work and school, there is no reliable or even usable public transportation because the US fails so hardcore at that. Now I can't get to work OR school. Right after I got in to the correct school, too. If I'm going to pay tuition, I can't get a new car or even lease one. If I don't go to school, I will have no health insurance, which I need desperately for I am a sick little puppy. I might have to dorm on campus just so that I have a way to get to classes. It will totally suck going from having an entire house to living in one room with multiple other people.

Time to pray to the flying spaghetti monster or cthulhu for a new car, or a new old car, or a car I can borrow from someone for the term. Its a guarantee that every time something goes very right, something else goes very, very wrong.

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:54:10 GMT

Wow... its been since halloween? I'm turning into a boring person, I swear it.

Today, I finally got my acceptance letter for fashion school. I'm driving down monday to get tuition and classes straightened out, then hopefully it'll be my happy ever after. Or, at the least, all this crap I've sewn in the last two months for my portfolio has not gone to waste! I need to upload pics in the very near future.

That was all I wanted for Christmas, and I actually got it! I applied in September, so I was starting to get very, very worried.

Best Christmas present ever! :D

Happy Halloween!

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:28:54 GMT

Happy Halloween to everyone who is actually doing something to celebrate it <_<
I'm still bleah enough that I'm giving up even dressing up to hand out candy, and will be curled up in bed with tea and my laptop for the rest of the day.

Also, dance rehearsals are much more entertaining when everyone who coughs is handed a surgical mask and everyone else is ordered to apply hand sanitizer gel after every team dance. We had at least one missing and out sick from every team today, and two solo dancers down.

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:05:00 GMT

In the last week I spent a total of ten hours designing and sewing a beautiful victorian gothic dress of black brocaded velvet and blue satin, ostensibly for Halloween but.... well, I tend to wear similar things on a day to day basis. But now, my Halloween is canceled!

I was already all packed and everything.

I was going to spend Friday night in Sleepy Hollow, and Saturday through Sunday at various parties in the city. Unfortunately, all of my family and friends who still live down in NYC are half-dead with the swine flu. On top of that, its now considered a disaster area in a state of emergency due to so much rampant influenza cases... Even if I had lodging, I still have no immune system so its almost guaranteed I'd be sick. Halloween is my favourite holiday, and now I have no plans at all. There is not one single god-damned halloween party in Buffalo, and only one in Rochester, which is held at a club that I hate. What kind of shitty college town doesn't have anything going on in the club scene for Halloween?

I'm all dressed up with no place to go.

A couple of graphics

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:03:12 GMT

I was lacking good wallpapers that fit my laptop's screen and didn't annoy the hell out of me, had a new copy of Photoshop, and was really excited about Miyavi coming to New York. Unfortunately its basically the one and only day that I cannot go, but I made some graphics before I figured that out.

All widescreen, 1440x900

More Sims...

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:38:05 GMT

I'm too frazzled and distracted by midterms to do anything that involves my brain. In fact, that first sentence required fixing six typos due to a level of coherency normally retained only by garden vegetables and my mother's dog. (the dog, by the way, just killed an innocent wild bunny in the yard. Evil, evil creature, that dog)

He still has no house, and no pets, so he had done nothing interesting yet; only look bored and admire the bushes

He looks suspiciously like he has boobs...

Lets see again...

Yep, those are totally, definitely, unequivocally, boobs. Sorry, Count.

So, Mana's house is under construction and he needed to be put somewhere else, there were no open houses. Of course, this means he had to go be someone's roommate for a little while. After eeny meeny minie moe, it came out to being Gackt's house...Cue chaos.

Gackt suggested it. He looks proud of himself, doesn't he, and ever so confident.

Which made Mana sigh and shake his head, after looking very sweetly confused. Like so.

Gackt was very good, because he's good at everything, right?

Mana considered the state of the table and decided that the overconfident little bugger was going down.

He concentrated very hard, it took him forever to decide this shot. Meanwhile, Gackt posed with his poolstick and sighed, and sighed, and sighed. Did I mention it took Mana a very long time to decide?

The result was inevitable to everyone but Gackt, who can never accept failure.

Yes, he threw a hissy fit over losing a game of pool. Then, he stomped downstairs with angry thought bubbles of Mana over his head. He's going to hold this grudge for a long, long time.

I hate doctors

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:59:28 GMT

...surprisingly this isn't about the ones I work with.

After the years of misdiagnosis and general medical fuckery, the neurologist went Ooh, epilepsy! and gave me pills for that. All was well and good for about eight months now, except that the stuff made my hair fall out enough that I was freaking out about it. So I go in and ask for a medication change for cosmetic reasons.

Cosmetic reasons, that's important.

I finally started taking the new stuff, along with the old stuff, two days ago. I'm infamously sensitive to any medication, so I was taking a quarter of the recommended starting dose. I woke up this morning perfectly fine, but since it was pouring rain and dreary, I went back to bed for a nap.

I woke up looking like I have chickenpox.

I ran a hand through my hair, and it came away with a rather disconcerting amount of hair that had fallen off.

This was rather traumatizing, as I hold myself to beauty standards not often seen outside of hollywood.

A quick google of the side effects shows that it causes hair loss, acne, and skin rashes that could, in rare cases, be life-threatening or deadly. What. The. Fuck. I have an intense desire to strangle a neurologist. I asked for something different for cosmetic reasons. I am vain, I know I'm vain, its a character trait. I even said "I'm sorry, I'm vain, I need to take something else." So, he gives me something that causes deadly rashes, acne, and hair loss? Am I speaking a foreign language?

People are fucking idiotic.

Luckily I haven't taken enough for it to stay in my system for long, I don't work until tuesday, and it should all be cleared up by then. Yet still, what. the. fuck.

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:28:37 GMT

I finally got around to posting Fluffy on craigslist. I feel bad trying to dump a pet, I have never done that before, but I'm really starting to resent the evil little bastard. I knew the black mexican kingsnakes could be a little bit aggressive, but hissing and striking at the glass when I walk by is a bit much. That and attacking whatever bit of me he can reach on the rare occasions I open his tank. He is an evil, evil bastard. I give up.

It doesn't help that he was an expensive little hatchling and expensive to care for. Hopefully someone, somewhere will want him and respond to the add. I can dream, right? At least Salazar is still a nice snuggly python even now that he's almost an adult.

On a completely different note, work... I'm at work right now being bored to death and occasionally squicked out by the papers that I'm flipping through, filing, or scanning into the records database. I swear I have learned more about the anus and shit at this job than I ever wanted to know, plus the ins and outs of breast cancer surgeries, hernias, and really bizarre injuries whose origin its best not to speculate on. Its interesting, but when the lunchtime conversation always flows around to the strangest thing found in a bodily orifice at the hospital this week...well, you can imagine it may be a little disconcerting.

Overall its not a bad job, I don't do all that much, get free food, and get paid. Even so, I have a few pet peeves.

1) Dear Doctor Old Guy, you do not, in fact, know everything about every subject. You're smart and a brilliant surgeon, but quit it already. Amber brought up horsebackriding and you were suddenly an expert, I brought up snakes and suddenly you knew everything there was to know about keeping reptiles. Its painfully obvious when you're bullshitting to sound smart, please keep to your area of expertise.

2) Dear Doctor Asshat. Everyone hates you, no, seriously we do. We are not your slaves. You may be hot, but not as hot as you think, so quit flirting. Driving that powerful, crazily expensive sportscar you have right now just screams midlife crisis and you can't park it worth shit. (also, neon orange? what were you thinking?)

3) Dear angry wives of middle-aged men. I open the call with "Hi, this is doctor ____'s office calling" then procede to ask for the patient. That is not your cue to get all defensive about who the fuck am I and why the fuck am I calling your man. I am a medical office worker, calling a patient. If your husband is seeing someone on the side, it isn't me, and I'm sorry that your marriage is so obviously miserable and mistrusting. I make an average of 30 patient phone calls per day, I get this at least once. Seriously people, chill the hell out.

4) I don't think my voice is anything out of the ordinary on the phone. Occasionally I may be using an accent because I'm bored, thats all. There is never any need to tell me how sexy my voice is, that I should do phone sex, or that we should hook up after your appointment. I'm talking to you, skeevy male patients. I wish you knew that my list of patients to call has all your information on it, and I'm inwardly snickering at your probably embarassing medical condition. Almost without fail, these guys are the ones whose appointment note says "Genital warts, discuss removal" or something similar.

5) Gangrene doesn't go away on its own. No, just NO. With a side of WTF is wrong with you.

6) If your operative report says anything about removing foreign objects from your ass, know that I am laughing hysterically at your stupidity. Thanks for brightening my day.

7) Crazy lady, no you don't have a scarab living up your ass. Really. Seriously. We're not lying to you, so please stop calling us.

8) Calling to confirm/remind you of your appointments is a courtesy, and also prevents a lot of no-shows which are a waste for us and we could be refilling them with people who desperately need help. Please don't be offended, I'm not insulting your intelligence or implying that you can't write a note on your calendar. I'm calling to confirm, just say yes I'll be there or no I can't come. A 'thanks' also does not go amiss.

9) I am not mapquest. I know our address and the vague idea of how to get here from a few major points of interest. It is not my job to know how to get here from every obscure and distant suburb of Buffalo, Rochester, and Niagara Falls. Double fail on you if you don't understand north, south, east, and west. I explained directions to a lady after explaining to her that the sun rises in the east and sets in west. I weep for humanity.

10) I am not a doctor or a nurse. I'm technically a nurse's aid, but here I am just a secretary and office monkey. Do not launch into a long and detailed description of whatever orifice or wound is leaking, the size/frequency/consistency of your bowel movements, or anything else, then ask me what to do. Even if I know the answer, I cannot give out medical advice. Its awkward for me to hear and embarassing for you when you realise you spilled some gross details; but, it was your fault. Don't yell at me for... what, answering the phone? Ask for the doctor, or to leave a message.

Then all of you, kindly gtfo and stfu.

Still failing at frequent updating.... But I haz a tattoo!

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:40:02 GMT

Still no vacation write up, even though I did finally get all the pictures uploaded off of my (presumed lost) camera. So, do to the lack of desire to write anything about vacation, here is the tale of my trip to the tattoo parlor.

We spent the first HOUR trying to get the stencils straight on my back, wondering what the hell was going on until we got out a ruler and discovered that one shoulder is almost an inch shorter than the other. That may, possibly, have something to do with once upon a time falling through a wall and dislocating it and ripping all sorts of internal painful things. By that time we just said fuck it, its going to be longer on that side. As long as the base and peak points of the wings are even, its good enough. We had gone through a ton of stencils and wiped them all off, so my back was pretty much all purple.

My friend Rachel who went with me, she knows the artist/owner of the shop, kept saying that I was going to cry like a little girl. Besides being my best friend, she's also quite a bitch. She wasn't anywhere near correct, since I fell asleep while he was doing the first one. What can I say, I had a long week. This is the one and only time I've been happy about gaining weight though. I'd spent the last week eating three meals a day in Little Italy. Not good for the waistline, at all, rather tragic really; but it made it so my back wasn't so disgustingly bony. I figure that would have hurt more.

One wing done. Ignore my face, its a bad, bad, horrible picture.

Me looking less horrible than the previous picture.

All done!

I need to have someone take a new picture now that its healed, and I'm back to the size I like to be. I have a feeling I'm going to hate those pictures in the very near future.

A few hours after this was done, and after we'd gone out for chocolate fondue (Rachel, you're a really bad influence, just FYI) we were sitting at her house watching So You Think You Can Dance on tv and chatting. Then she stopped for a second, grabbed my shoulders and turned me around. Ensuing conversation was something like.

Her: You know what this looks like?
Me: umm, art nouveau wing outlines? Henna?
Her: Hyde!
Me: ...................fuck. Couldn't have mentioned that before I got it permanently inked?
Her: ....Thought it was intentional
Me: I wanted wings, that were outlines, and artsy.
(I had an idea in mind and drew a basic outline and babbled with lots of useless hand gestures about what I wanted, then Joe, the tattoo artist, refined it and offered me a couple final options)
Her: ....Oooooh.
Me: *trying to figure out if this is a good thing*

Well, whatever it looks like, I like my wings. I look like a pretty angel! I've gotten a lot of compliments on them, and have convinced all the little kids at dance that its Sharpie and not a real tattoo. Gullible children are great, they really are. I thought it would be a relatively bad idea for the person they look up to and emulate to be all YAY PERMANENT BODY ART! This way I don't have to field questions from parents about why their little girls suddenly think tattoos are the greatest thing ever. Now I just have to wait and see how long the sharpie excuse will hold up.

Also, my mother hasn't seen the wings yet. I live with her right now. Don't get me wrong, I love my mother, I really do... but her views on changing your appearance at ALL are a bit strange. She flipped her shit when I dyed my hair with henna. She's got this whole 'natural beauty is the only beauty' thing going on. That's all well and good when you have amazing red hair, blue eyes, and perfect skin. I look normal, so I have to do something with it.

There is absolutely nothing she can do about it when she finds out, I am an adult after all, but its going to be awkward. Most likely, she won't talk to me for a couple of weeks and then question if my health insurance covers dermatologist visits. She'll get over it eventually, plus its almost fall now and time to put away the tank tops.

But I have wings. And they're awesome.

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:46:45 GMT

Wow... I fail at the whole "consistently updating" thing, as per usual, but I have been outrageously busy with work, work number two, vacation, and all sorts of things. Despite all the hubbub I'm really rather bored, but when I have downtime all I want to do is sleep. Even when I'm hanging around online on messenger I'm working on some writing project or language project in preparation for the fall term. It seems like I don't do that much at all, yet I've been a hard person to track down lately. Maybe my life is only boring from inside it.

If I wasn't at work I'd have interesting things to post, but it isn't any fun at all to talk about my vacation or my tattoo (yes, I finally got one, and its awesome!) without pictures. Photos are what make it snazzy.

I'm only working until three this afternoon, so I'll upload some pictures when I get home, and before I head out to coordinate a children's dance show. If I don't post pictures today it won't happen for at least another week, because all of next week is taken up with a dance intensive to whip the championship contingent of the school into shape for Oireachtas.

....I may not survive.

Really!

Alright, perhaps thats a tiny, tiny bit of exaggeration. But I took the day off on saturday after the intensive ends so that I can sleep for at least ten hours.

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:52:16 GMT

A while ago I had a novel in the works, the idea for which had existed in some form, in my head, quite literally for years. I have maps of my world I drew when I was about twelve still stuffed in art folders behind my desk. I'd written short scenes and important pieces, but the idea of an entire cohesive novel was daunting. I'm the queen of abandoned projects, and I didn't want to get sick of my world by spending so much time putting it all into words.

Last November I figured why not, I'll finally go for it and write it down, NaNoWriMo will make me actually work it. I did write it and kept going long after the writing month was ended. At last count I had nearly 200 pages and was nearly at the climax of the story.

Then my computer died, my ipod crashed, and I lost my flashdrive somewhere on one of the university campuses. There goes the original and both backups. The only one who had a copy was my, by then, ex-boyfriend. He got over himself long enough to send it to me through messenger. That was when I was using my old netbook. Somewhere, somehow, it got lost and never made it back to my real computer.

I know for a fact that he never deletes shit off of his laptop, figuring that with a terabyte of harddrive space he doesn't have to. Find the logic there, I dare you... but I digress. He has it, more than one copy, more than one edit, and the malicious bastard won't talk to me. He'll neither answer the phone nor answer messenger. I saw the 'typing a response' line on messenger, so he obviously saw it. Why are boys so dumb? I feel like I'm in highschool, and I never even went to highschool. Apparently being a manipulative, obsessive, uncaring bastard was not enough. All I want is the book, just the book. He's spent the last few months trying desperately to get in contact with me and I know I shouldn't feed the troll; but you'd think the desperate guy would latch on to contact long enough to give me my book, you know?

What a long, strange trip it's been...

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:41:02 GMT

...Literally.

I'm headed to the neurologist monday so they can prescribe me something that holds the epilepsy at bay and doesn't leave me so utterly spaztastic. It did not help that this was the week for parties and no one clued me in ahead of time, I swear to god everyone is partying at once and I'm invited. Apparently everyone finds it amusing that the girl who used to drink like a lush and never get smashed is now a complete straight-edge lightweight <_<

Not my fault, nor choice... But they had their fun, they fed me one beer than giggled like mad when I started seeing sound. Cue comments about me being the trippiest one there while also being the most sober. The quote of the day was "Wow, your voice feels blue." Kudos to anyone who can count the ways in which that is monumentally Not Right.

Not right perhaps, but funny nonetheless. Eventually this all gets to the point where you just have to give up and laugh at the weirdness of it all. I've also been given an opportunity that I've been waiting for since I was, oh, about fourteen or so. I am going to dye my hair blue. I never could do to being on stage so much and having to conform to studio rules, and my endless fear of wrecking my hair with bleach and dye. Now that the meds are making it super thin and raggy, I figured why the hell not. Enjoy it while I've got it, right? I have a ton of hats which I will need to make use of in the near future though, if I want to remain The World's Gothiest Surgical Receptionist (tm). The doctors and late middle-aged ladies think funky clothes and makeup are cute and cool up to a point, and most of it is handwaved as "Oh, she's a fashion designer," but blue hair probably will not go over well. This weekend is officially declared "Search For A Nice Tophat" weekend, once I'm finished dealing with the explosion of relatives who will be all up in my personal space.

I finally finished getting my Sims put back together. It seems I spend more time downloading CC, installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, troubleshooting, swearing, bitching, creating CC, swearing more, and shooting death glares at my computer than I do actually playing the game. Finding as much of my previously used CC as possible after the irrecoverable computer death of 2009. In my last Sims2 Installation I had everything under the sun, I had, lets see... a neighborhood themed for Wraeththu, Harry Potter, LotR, generic rennaissance, generic modern day, and a neighborhood for all rockstars/actors/whatever else.

This time I narrowed it down a little, I'm condensing to two neighborhoods: one for my new Wraeththu sims, and one generic modern day with bonus celebrities. That is surprisingly funny, I've got Dir En Grey living across the street from the cast of Gilmore Girls. Copious amounts of amusement, I has it. Everything is still being built, established, and created so no stories or anything cool yet, but I have a few shots...

Awwww, isn't he *cute* ? Poor confused little sim, woke up in the middle of the night. The little Z in the background detracts from the cuteness, I forgot to get the hack to turn those off. Oops.

Cuteness when abruptly woken aside, Mana is not a happy sim and does not play well with others. He plays guitar and pouts on the couch looking gothy ALL DAY. Eventually I will get around to making the rest of his bandmembers, maybe then he won't be such a bitch.

and... well, damn. I didn't fix the camera settings since installation and those are the only two I have after I remembered to fix it, all the others are tiny, grainy, and just plain bleah. So, I won't post them. I'm only working until 2 tomorrow, so I'll spend the rest of the day playing sims....

Its been a while...

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:43:21 GMT

Its been a very long time since I posted here, almost a year in fact. A very busy year. Recently I'd deleted everything in my journal, in hindsight it was not a smart move, in lieu of starting over... which then, of course, never happened. Maybe it will now, I miss being involved in social networking sites, Livejournal was a lot of fun when I was last into it.

So much has changed that I could go on and on longer than anyone would care to read, so I guess I'll just update my profile to reflect some of that. I'm still dancing, writing, playing the Sims, and still haven't managed to graduate from college. More for lack of trying than lack of, well, anything else. I've changed my second major four times, the love of the theatre has stayed constant through every change, both in school and out. But now its been morphed a little, or tweaked. Multiple sewing projects, normal clothes and costumes, are in the works to build a more recent portfolio, aimed at FIT. That was my original dream, outside of dancing, and I think my lack of progress (if gaining knowledge of so many random subjects is a lack of progress) was me trying so hard to go with other's dreams for my future rather than chasing my own. Who knows if it will work out, but if not at least I will be well-dressed.

I missed having a place to write about my day and read it later for insight, or gripe, or post all the ridiculously uncanny things that happen on a day to day basis. (I swear to god, I'm a magnet to insanity) That, and posting Sims and WoW pictures, although a good deal less of that. Two years sucked into that, I'm done except for goofing around on weekends. I have a lot of posting to do, writing to do, and hopefully catching back up with old friends on LJ. Its good to be back.

Why do you dance

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:43:34 GMT

Another dancer at practice really made me think... He was practicing a movement, and Moira commented that he should be leaping much higher. His response was that he was afraid to jump too high, in case he didn't land it correctly, citing that he'd be out of competition or at least set back if something went wrong. I understand the worry on a new move that you're just learning, I suppose, but how will you ever do it perfectly unless you try? He's young, and new, and has never hurt himself dancing, I'm to the point where if I break a leg or an ankle again, there is a good chance that I would stop dancing professionally. Yet, I really have no inhibitions at all about dancing anymore. What would happen should I fall has little bearing on what I do now, there should be no holding back.

What is the point of dancing at all if you don't do it because you love it? I leap as high as I can because I love the feeling, it is as close to flying as you can ever come on your own. I'll gladly stay at the studio long after everyone else has gone home and dance until I feel as though I can hardly move anymore. The others put in the alloted amount of practice time or perhaps a little more if there is a competition soon, and give me strange looks if I tell them my rehearsal plans. I have met surprisingly few people who share my same view. To most this is simply what they do, not a dream and a passion that they have always carried with them.

Perhaps you get to the point where you no longer care what happens, only what you are doing at the moment. I dance because I love the movement, it makes me feel freer than anything else I've ever discovered. I used to stay close to the ground and be careful of my every move, especially after times I've been out of rehearsal due to injury. I have been told after several incidents that I should be careful of falling again, be careful of damaging tendons even more than they already were. Eventually I came around to the realisation that there was little point at all in lessening my performance out of fear. I worked hard to get myself back to where I am now, after things that would make many people quit. If you cannot give it your all, there is no point in trying at all.

Dancing has helped me through some incredibly painful times in my life, its something that I can completely lose myself in forget my problems, my life outside, anything that is troubling me. It would not have been so consoling had I never given up my fear of falling. I've had people, both other dancers and spectators, tell me that I look far more passionate about what I do than others on stage beside me. Some have asked me why, I tell them that I am not afraid to fly.

Irish dance

merveilleux_bleu@yahoo.com — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:31:22 GMT