The grade for my last summer class was posted today. Another 4.0 under my belt, as predicted. Project GPA Repair Summer is a success!
2.1315 – GPA before returning to school
2.3130 – GPA after first semester back
2.4444 – GPA after summer semester
Also, I am finally a Senior. How wierd is that… actually moving forward. ;)
Happy b-day,
Those drums are beating today… louder and louder. ;)
Class is over for the summer. Call me overconfident, but I think I got another 4.0 under my belt.
I’ve come up with a plan to stop procrastinating with the server administration side of my job, and it seems to be working. Yay for progression and pay!
I’m having this surge of self-confidence. I wonder if I’ve been infected by some sort of alien. Maybe it’s the approach of Fall semester and freshmen. Maybe it’s actual, honest-to-goodness self-confidence. Whichever. I’m certainly enjoying it.
Apparently, angered Apple users will stampede when gathered in a herd. Thanks to
Sorry to hear about your dog,
I’m only 400 entries behind on my friends page now. Now THIS is accomplishment. Heh.
Thanks
I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.
I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.
I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.
We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.
I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.
I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.
I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in
another year I will probably be able to walk again.
I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.
We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.
I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.
I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.
I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.
I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.
I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.
I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don’t believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.
I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.
Repost this if you believe that homophobia is wrong.
This was written after the 11 June game.
They were polite. They didn’t push me. They were there to listen. They were patient, waiting for me to open up in my own time. Despite being the one that did most of the talking, I feel like I am infinitely closer to these two than I intended to be.
I was worried that I was going to lose Ling after I told her about the Quiet. Instead, she came back with an entire Cabal that she wanted me involved in. There’s so much that we’ve all talked about… I can’t write it all down…
[There’s a darker spot on the paper, and some smeared ink. The text starts again below that.]
Rapid-fire. This is how it was in the Quiet, or in that time that I remember as Quiet. Revelations and understandings would come in spurts, and so fast that I could only react for fear of drowning. My fortune in a year’s time is to be in California, fighting what seems to be Nephandi. If I still have no avatar, I will still fight. If I do have an avatar, then I will have succeeded where others have failed, if they have even tried.
The Weaver’s Song. The Dragon’s Song. An avatar that is of the Weaver, but not mad. One who serves balance.
Weaver affiliate Phil is off to The Well, somewhere in China, to meet his fate. See you soon.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Born under the sign of the Bull, my friend Sarah is a stupendously creative person. The flow of fertile intuition never seems to stop. She attributes this blessing, which is also a bit of a curse, to her relationship with an imaginary friend she calls Eliza. “Eliza is mostly my mysterious and helpful muse, but sometimes she fills me up with too much good stuff,” she says. “She can give me so many insights, ideas, and inspirations that I feel like I’m going to explode.” In the coming week, Taurus, I suspect your experience will resemble Sarah’s. Would you like to know the best way to ensure the abundance doesn’t turn into excess? Make room in your life for a flood of invigorating changes.
My upstairs smells like campfire.
I may have come back too soon.
What a Willow.
This was written after the 28 May 2005 game.
The phrase that repeats over and over in my mind is “Move forward, not backward, and not sideways.” Mei Ling may be right in her guesses that a spirit has done me some great favor in rearranging the Tellurian so that my mind could be set to rest. Her grandmother may be right that the Quiet may have damaged my memory in a significant way. Any of these may be truth. They all may be truth. The truth of the past is not the truth that I am bound and determined to protect. Unlike other Dreamspeakers, The truth that I must watch over is that of the future.
I will pause, for just a moment, to speak of the past. I only do this because it is important to Mei Ling. She disappeared from Berkley in California about 3 and a half months ago. Apparently, she has knowledge of Spirit and Time that her ordeal has closed off to her. Her avatar has accused her of trying to quash it. If she believed that the umbral realm that made up her “past” was real, that quashing may have been required to keep her alive. I do wonder why I, or a reflection of me, was there, in her umbral dream, but for once this curiosity does not rule me.
I worry for her. My feelings are beyond any memory or Quiet. Returning to California with her grandmother may be best for her, but I am still incredibly jealous of this male stripper apprentice of hers. Apparently, they dated, and she guided him through his awakening. Midas says that this experience, feeling the jealousy, is good. I don’t disagree with him. Ah, the rollercoaster of dating an Ecstatic. If he can show her that her identity doesn’t stand on her past as its only foundation, then I will thank him.
That said, I once again look forward. I once again think about teaching. The simple and miraculous act of being there for someone, of nudging them in the right direction, of showing them the glories of the Umbra and of their own spirit, this is what I think of. I will follow both Mei Ling and Will’s leads. There is a neo-pagan group on U of M’s campus, and I intend to attend their meeting this week, and begin a search for those with minds open to all spirits, natural and tech. I think that this would be a step forward.
If my old apprentice lives, and are paths are to cross, the spirits will bring her to me again. I do miss her. I think that of all people that I may have hurt unintentionally in my Quiet, she was the first. But I move forward.
The Archmage Hermetic (what is his name, anyway?) has lost it for good. It seems that he has had his lucid moments, but had never discovered the death of his wife during one of these. Harry, after discussing ways to repair or re-make the ward, let on that she had died. Not only that, but that Victor had been present. I’m not sure if he got that last bit from Harry or Mei Ling. God damn, but that girl has steel ovaries. He totally flipped out, summoning Victor and his wife, and then set his Horizon realm on fire.
The good news is that the church node can be re-opened, and its trigger is the Life sphere. Not only that, but the old ward can be re-asserted, or we can create a new one. Those who do re-create it can pick and choose who may enter and who may not. If Ann Arbor is to become a haven for mages, as Midas wants, this may be the only way. It’s either that or we all learn to defend ourselves from all other suprnaturals, and to guard the Labyrinth from any Nephandi that may enter.
I hope that the ritual for re-creating the ward exists somewhere besides in the Archmage’s head.
Raven has challenged me to a contest of riddles. I must best him, and solve his riddles, before he will re-teach me the art of opening the doorways in the gauntlet. His riddles are incredibly complex, and he has guessed all of mine up to this point. I am lucky that he has patience. I am stuck puzzling out a five-minute long beast about shadow and light. I have a feeling that the shadow and light represent the Umbra and the physical worlds, but there is a key in the riddle that will bring sense to it. I will meditate on the answer in between work, visiting the young neo-pagans, and spending time with The House.
I hope that Mei Ling returns from California soon, so we can spend time together again. Geh. Roller coaster.
Nero was hanging around outside the house. He left me a note. Terry spoke to him. I wonder if I should ask The House if it is okay for him to come in. I feel wary, and I don’t know how much I can trust him. Though I suppose that the Fae on campus must feel the same way about me. “Thanks for all the books.”
I need to get an internet connection inside the house. I wonder how Vinnie and Backspace connected. I wonder if any of their equipment is still around the house.
Friday was a day of silence. It was good, and I only slipped up once. I’m getting better and better at this. I did notice, though, that most people have the desire to start up conversations, even though they know you’re not talking, and then get uncomfortable when you don’t reply.
Some people are lucky enough to have
Yesterday was odd, and good. Paying the Board of Water and Light bill felt good, instead of tiresome. Picked up my pull from Fortress… it’s been there since March, slowly collecting Darkness titles. We also attempted to pick up a unidirectional antenna for our wireless bridge. To hear
I pointed the thing in the correct direction, and got 1 to 2% -less- reception than I had with the omnidirectional. So, we went back to Best Buy (we had a gift card… now we know better) and returned it. We went to CompUSA to shop around some, and found the same model for $20 less. So much for the gift card. Anyway, there wasn’t anything there that looked worthwhile for less than $70, so we took off. I may just mount the unit, with its omnidirectional, outside my office so it has one less wall to go through. Holding it up there for testing purposes will make my arm pretty damn tired, though. Heh.
Later on, I had good comic-reading happy time at Denny’s, as well as BREAKING WRITER’S BLOCK! I got some goodness down for Adam, and that made me happy. I also looked back through the piece with the crime ring, and I may bring it back up if the rumors about
The 90 days since I submitted “Two Vampires” is almost up, so I get to send an email requesting a status report. If I don’t hear back from them in a week, I think I’ll retract the submission and try someone else. Any of the other writers out there think that’s fair? Not? Somethin’?
Today is the Mage tabletop game. I’ve got some homework to do. I’ve got some workin’ to do. I’ve got the speech patterns of Firefly infesting. Those DVD’s just keep popping up.