Updates: Media (lyrics) has a new layout. I could never figure out how to lay it out, but it's easier to navigate now. I'm still working on a better duplicate Mamblog mod. I'm trying to make submittions easier but the poetry form died for some reason. Quizzes are also on their way from the old site. Joomla content isn't very code friendly so I'm having to rewrite old code. You can still click on News > AH v21 > Screen if you wish to use the quizzes.
10:56pm 6/14 "And Veronika’s advice to young dancers, pursuing their dream? `Ballet is a very difficult and complex profession. To gain even a measure of success is very tough. It is a culmination of many factors: physical abilities, emotional commitment, dancing ability, stubbornness, sheer will, belief in yourself, and the right frame of mind to succeed (even when the world seems to crumble around you).
"`One must be willing to work without any breaks, with a limitless pain threshold, and an unwavering love of your chosen art. But the most important factor is to know that you have something to say to your audience and to be able to deliver it to them in such a way that your hard work will then be rewarded.`"
I ordered a subscription to The New Criterion and I was reading their brochure with quotes from various critics. I like these two most: "The weird thing is, the art world he bashes reads Kramer like crazy, even if it's by flashlight, under the blankets. The wickedly iconoclastic, sinfully readable Kramer makes other art critics read like, well, art critics.” – Peter Plagens, Newsweek, "Roger Kimball is one of the rare critics who consistently responds with the proper degree of outrage.” – Gertrude Himmelfarb Times Literary Supplement. I've read a couple intros to articles and in the first 100-200 words there is a lot said but you really never hear what the article is going to be about...AT ALL. If it's about one dancer, in the first 200 words there isn't a single mention of him/her and you wonder if you're reading the correct article! Anyhow, sounds like a good read regardless. It sure is expensive though, $48 for 10 issues and they're asking readers to donate $2,500 so that they can cover the costs of "bagging" magazines for safer mailing. Obviously there are die hard readers who may just find it worth wild to donate (it's also tax deductible) but it would really have to WOW me to pay even more so that others can have ther magazines "protected" in shipment.
I put the above note out for my parents to see because I'm always dealing with large spiders or other creepy crawlys late at night when no one's around and my thoughts behind it are usually pretty panicked. Our internet's down and I'm bored and when the lights go out at night the spiders come out so the spiders are coming out in other rooms of the house. It also makes me not want to turn my light off when I sleep, I'm afraid of the creatures that will come out in the night. One spider that came out was ON MY BED and I just barely missed it when I leaped out of bed. I spent a huge part of the night trying to find it to make sure I killed it or TO KILL IT. It was really scarey. Anyhow, I need to go find some food to calm me down and help me move on with my evening. I CAN'T BELIEVE MY DSL IS DOWN!
Our two cats get mattes really easily. They're half Himalayan, half something else and have fairly long hair. One has always been abnormally skinny, possibly because she had to have part of her intestines removed when she was just a kitten because they got all twisted up. That might also be the cause of her having abnormally oily skin, from not getting enough nutrients due to a shortened digestive tract. Anyhow, they HATE being brushed. We've tried different brushes but they won't sit still for it. They seem to get either pissed off or giddy so they constantly walk in circles or they're swatting at us every time we try to brush them. They also spend some time in the atrium laying in dirt so mattes are a common problem with them. Our old cat many years ago would lay on the carpet on his back while my mother cut the mattes out and LOVED to be brushed. Our current cats have to be practically SAT ON to get the mattes cut out. My parents will hold one cat together and cut a few mattes but they never finish so they have to go back and do it again and the cats cry and the one that isn't getting done is pissed because she thinks they're hurting the other cat...It's a huge federal case and my mother just WILL NOT take them to the groomer despite the ease. She SOOOO has time but uses "time" as her excuse. Last time one of the cats who's getting older actually got taken to the groomer and she was SOOOO HAPPY when she got home, she was prancing around the room (I don't know if you've ever seen a young filly/colt prancing around in a field with a lot energy, that's what she looked like, it was too funny). Anyway, that was probably before Thanksgiving 2006 and the other cat still has mattes that seem to have gotten better but are still there. Well, this evening I was playing with her, crumpling paper and pretending there was something under a pillow case I had on the floor and when she descided she didn't want to play anymore I threw the pillow case over her head and grabbed her. She managed to wiggle free from the pillow case but I had my right arm under her front legs and my hand wrapped around grabbing as much skin behind her neck as I could and after a while I could have ALMOST said she was CALM. I think she was scared more than anything because when I'd show her that I had just cut out a matte she'd smell it and seemed to relax a little like she knew I wasn't trying to hurt her, but HELP. She struggled a little but was pretty calm when I let her go and I caught up with her at her food bowl and she was actually PURRING while LETTING ME PET HER which usually she's afraid of me for a week after I do that. Then she didn't even run away from me when I'd tried to pet her after that. She's already a totally emotially scarred paranoid 'FRAIDY CAT so it's a miracle that I didn't leave with blood pouring from severall puncture wounds lol. Well, you can probably tell I'm pretty bored. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it but my insurance denied my Provigil, said I couldn't have it which is bull shit. They don't know me or the fact that I've tried EVERY MEDICATION ON THE MARKET and once I find one medication that works they say I can't have it. They just don't want to pay. I got this long bull shit letter from them basically telling me what I already knew, that they weren't approving it. Work was so crazy today. I barely had time to breathe I was so busy. People kept putting things on my desk. I stayed 45 minutes after just to get some of it under control but usually I can sit and THINK about what I'm doing but today I had to be working on FIVE THINGS AT A TIME just to keep up. The second one thing was finished I was dashing across the room to start the next thing. Even though we have one extra person, we're shorthanded because he's just doing the filing that I was putting off because I'm so busy. Hopefully that's VERY short lived. My sister won't be back from her honeymoon until next Tuesday so as long as people keep calling, there's no hope of things slowing down. The day went by SUPER FAST but I'd really like to just work a couple hours then come home and start preparing my father's computer for the rest of my time. He's using my sister's computer this week but as of Tuesday he'll need a working computer down there. He just bought a MAC and the core processes just doesn't work as simply as a PC. Everything else is great but getting the network going is tough. He turned off the computer and when he turned it on the internet was down again. He keeps having to enter the network password which should not be required. It should be a one time thing like all the other computers on the network. It's also weired because a lot of the commands are different, the minimize/maximize/close buttons are on the right, and all the menus at the top of each window are at the top of the desktop rather than at the top of the ACTUAL WINDOW. It's very confusing sometimes. You go to open a file and there's nothing there but the max/min/close buttons which are just green/yellow/red like a street signal. I like it when guys come in small packages (i.e. my height). The guy that helped us at the MAC store was about my height and it's SO AWESOME to be able to just look at a person (ESPECIALLY A GUY) straight in the eye when I'm talking to them rather than having to turn my head up to talk to everyone (and especially when I'm talking to them about computers or something on that order ;-). He was cute too. I'm always intimidated because guys tend to have clearer or PERFECT skin, it's just the way it is, and the fact that we women wear makeup makes it even worse for us. I'm always worried about my skin, like if it's not perfect no guy could ever like me but the guy at the MAC store didn't have perfect skin which (unless it's from smoking) was totally fine with me *wink* I'm sure he was taken or younger than me or not interested but he was totally cute, I had a hard time thinking clearly and not making a fool of myself. I wish I could find a reason to go back but since I have no money and I already own an iPod, I'd only be able to go brouse which I tend to [feel like I] look like a criminal when I'm just brousing. I FEEL that way anyway. I'm really very paranoid about that. I'm always afraid that if I'm not buying something people might think I'm going to steal [which, and i'll say it again, I'VE NEVER DONE IN MY WHOLE LIFE!]
So, I've only used Windows Movie Maker once in the past, to cut out pieces of a movie that made the whole thing skip. I cut a few frames out and it made the movie work fine on disk. At the wedding yesterday (Saturday) I took a couple videos on my camera, one of my father's toast and another of the garter, though I missed the beginning because I apparently didn't hit the record button hard enough. Anyhow, it's a really cool program for someone like me who just wants to rotate the video so that it's right side up and I even added a title at the beginning and credits at the end. It seems like you could almost do a short animation with this software, which would be totally awsome to try.
While waiting for the movie to save, I tested out my new Fluidity Bar (linked in a previous entry) and the Instructional/Beginner video. I think the only hard part is the TV is only in one corner of the room and the way my room is set up right now, I have to have the fluidity bar in such a way that I can't see the TV for several of the positions. It's a totally difficult workout but it felt like it was about ten minutes long but it claims to be 30 minutes (I didn't time it) and it was definitely a workout. They even show you the beginner, intermediate, and advanced positions all at once so if one position you're able to do the advanced, but another you have to do the beginner, you have them both being explained at the same time so you can keep up. It shouldn't be hard to do two or three times a week like it says because it just isn't one of those workouts where you're bored and just waiting for the thing to end. It just goes by very quickly because you're constantly changing positions. I can tell I'll probably be pretty sore tomorrow. You work everything.
AMAZON REVIEW OF THE HBO DOCUMENTARY: THIN
Title: Glimpse into Eating Disorder Thinking & Treatment
Review: I definitely agree that this documentary is limited in it's portrayal of the "reality" of eating disorders and treatment. For several reasons, this still isn't the ULTIMATE look into the lives of eating disordered patients, though it's the best to date. Patients do die as a result of eating disorders, 7%-10%, a fact that is not made out as a very serious in this film, any one of the women portrayed were on the brink when they arrived. You lose the fact that most eating disorder patients, patients with symptoms as serious as those of Shelly and even those with less serious symptoms, spend their ENTIRE LIVES fighting. Spending years in many different types of treatment, being treated, inside & outside residential treatment centers, as if they should "just eat" because family members and friends don't understand. As frustrated as those around us can get, understanding the thinking seems to be harder than most any other "mental" illness, because why can't we "just eat?" I think this film does a good job of portraying how nurses and other personnel act towards patients, and how patients, both inside and outside of treatment, feel that they are not only misunderstood, but basically treated as though our illnesses are just a burden, so "get over it" so to speak, when in fact it is MUCH more complicated.
The only other thing left out of this movie is the fact that men can also have eating disorders and that there are treatment centers out there that are for males AND females, though many are just for females. From my viewpoint, the film also shows the importance of small 6-8 patient residential treatment centers since at least three of the four patients left too abruptly and returned to their disordered behavior immediately after leaving treatment. Such a large group as The Renfrew Center allows “cliques” to form, rivalries, and lack of trust which is a major source treatment failure because patients won’t open up to one another. In regards to the facility in this film, the life of a patient is also limited, whereas other treatment centers with fewer patients find help not just through talking & eating together, but through learning how to be comfortable with everyday tasks like grocery shopping, eating at restaurants, finding hobbies that bring them joy, and many other “outings” to treat the whole person and prepare them for a completely new (and hopefully improved) life without an eating disorder.
The description above "Thin offers hope, but no happily-ever-after ending for these women" is truely the lesson of the disorder and of this film. Like alcoholism, you never truely "recover," but if you are one of the lucky ones, you can reach a state of constantly being "in recovery," always with starvation and purging in the back of your mind.
Insurance companies today have somehow moved up in rank over our doctors, telling us when we’re well, what medications we can take, and what treatments will work, despite the fact that they don’t know us, don’t have medical degrees, and don’t know anything about anything. The statement made “People treat it like a cold, but it’s more like cancer” is not only how PEOPLE treat eating disorders, but how INSURANCE treats them. This film should stand as a testament to all eating disorders who are still struggling due to insurance companies who WON’T LET US GET HELP.
Double click any word on this page for a definition.
Using Firefox? Enable definitions by downloading the extension. Sorry, this feature does not currently work in Opera or Safari.
I put the above note out for my parents to see because I'm always dealing with large spiders or other creepy crawlys late at night when no one's around and my thoughts behind it are usually pretty panicked. Our internet's down and I'm bored and when the lights go out at night the spiders come out so the spiders are coming out in other rooms of the house. It also makes me not want to turn my light off when I sleep, I'm afraid of the creatures that will come out in the night. One spider that came out was ON MY BED and I just barely missed it when I leaped out of bed. I spent a huge part of the night trying to find it to make sure I killed it or TO KILL IT. It was really scarey. Anyhow, I need to go find some food to calm me down and help me move on with my evening. I CAN'T BELIEVE MY DSL IS DOWN!