Pre Season Jitters

Well, today is the day.  It has been 97 days since Boston won the cup.  It has been 97 days since the riots in Vancouver.  It is nearly 100 days later, and I am still emotional at the thought of starting another season of hockey.  Can I put my heart through this again?  I don't think I really have a choice.  I could try to ignore it, but the passion of the fans in this city, this lower mainland, it's off the charts!  I would not be able to ignore it entirely even if I wanted to.  I could boycott the radio and television and that wouldn't even help.  As the season progresses people jump on the band wagon by the thousands and eventually the shear magnitude of the masses of fans makes it impossible to ignore.  

So here we are.  September 20th, 2011.  Our emotions have had the summer off, but for those of us who are really into it, we didn't take the summer off.  No, we waited until the earliest possible date when it would not be deemed insane or foolish to don our Canucks Jerseys and hit the streets in our blue and green.  We listened to the radio and watched the TV for any coverage of the young stars prospect camp.  We checked the Vancouver Canucks website often to read of any news, and to watch entertaining videos of our beloved team.  We took to Twitter and Facebook and followed the progress of our team as they prepared to wow us yet again in what is now the current NHL season.  

After a summer of tragic losses that far outweighed the loss of the Cup itself we join together, players and fans alike.  We don our blue and green.  We hit the ice and take to the streets.  We come together as one team with a new hope in our hearts.  A hope for things yet to come. 

It may only be pre season, but anyone who knows anything at all knows that this is where the magic begins.  Hitting the ice tonight in two different games in two different cities, our new and improved Vancouver Canucks face off against their closest North West Division rivals, the Calgary Flames, hoping to return the favour for the double whammy they got served at the beginning of last pre season.  Good luck boys!  We've got your backs.  Make us proud.

Here's to the memory of those lost.

Here's to a new season.

Thanks for "listening."

Mindless Existence of the Night

I would like to dedicate this post and the rest of the posts today to a good friend of mine.  As it is now officially September 15th, it is his birthday, and he is old again.  Happy Birthday.  You are a wonderfully creative person and such a great friend.  I appreciate you more than you know.  You are full of potential and the world better WATCH OUT once you graduate, cuz you are gonna go FAR!  Have a great day, and remember that even though you are a twin, there is no one in the world quite like you.  Happy Birthday :D 

I can get very bored very easily.  When I have nowhere to go, and nothing to do, can’t sleep, all my friends and family are asleep because it is the middle of the night, my apartment is clean, I am done baking cupcakes and I can’t rearrange my furniture because it will wake up the neighbours, I turn to the internet.  This normally only happens when I can’t sleep.  It is not like I sit around on the internet playing games and watching videos when I could be doing other more important things… or rather, other actually important things. 

I find that there are many times when I despise the fact that I have to continue on existing in spite of the lack of anything going on in my life.  I feel almost impatient for life to happen.  When I can’t sleep at night, which is very often, I really hate that I have to wait around for the rest of the world to wake up before I can do anything productive with myself.  My existence feels meaningless in those hours, so I tend to do things that are equally meaningless and mindless.  Prime example: playing computer games like Solitare or Mahjong.  I don’t really have to think to play these games.  I just play them, and then realize that hours have gone by and it is almost time for the rest of the world to wake up / time for me to get on with living.  Occasionally I feel the need to use my brain a little bit more so I play games like Bookworm, Sky Island – a game which I found on the internet.  It is actually really neat.  It is a 2D animation game, similar to games on the Original NES.  The cool part is that as you are going along, you can click and drag the mouse across the screen to change your perspective, 90 degrees at a time (not up and down though.)  When your perspective is changed, you find that you can reach other areas and objects that you couldn’t reach before.  Click here to play!

There are also times at night when I can’t sleep, I am not into the mindless games thing, but I also don’t want to actually DO anything.  This is when I usually turn to YouTube.  I don’t even remember how I found this guy, but I came across a channel called the Philip DeFranco Show.  It is a guy named Philip DefFanco (aka sxephil) who takes various news stories from that day and talks about them.  I believe he is either the same age as me, or a year older, so when he talks about all this stuff that most young people would find boring and pointless, it gets us interested!  I am glad that I can still loop myself into the term “young people.”  You’re only as old as you feel right?  Haha!

Have you ever noticed how you start talking or acting like people when you hang out with them too much?  Well, I have noticed that I have recently started talking like Philip Defranco.  At first I was a bit embarrassed because I have never actually hung out with the guy, but then I realized that nobody I know will care because they don’t know who he is anyway.  Now that I have said this, all like, 12 of you will know who he is if you click on any of the links to his stuff.  So, if you notice me talking like sxephil, I apologize … sort of… but not really, cuz it pretty much just makes me sound more interesting.  Now if only I could sprout some adorable dimples from watching too much PDS... that would be something!

Here are some links to some of the works/sites of the amazing Philip DeFranco:

Stuff Phil Likes YouTube Channel

The Philip DeFranco Show (PDS)

Follow @PhillyD on Twitter!

Please be advised, he is awesome and doesn’t really care what people think, so If you are sensitive to swearing, you may want to avoid some of his stuff… or keep your hand over the mute button just in case, or toughen up a bit (one of those three.)  Haha, ya… that might get some interesting reactions from the Christian crowd.  Oops!  Oh well, PhillyD is awesome, and he is doing this world a great service by causing young people to actually give a hoot (notice the lack of swearing…) about world events.

Thanks for all you do, PhillyD, and for your adorable dimples.  I’m proud to know you… or… know of you.

Thanks for "listening."

Gray Clouds Above. Sweet Life Below.

Fall can be so depressing!  As far as I can remember, fall/winter is actually the time of year when most students drop out of school or commit suicide.  The reason for this is the weather.  Sunshine really does make us happy.  In Canada we have a severe lack of sunshine for about eight months of the year at least, and as such, we have a lack of natural vitamin D which aids in ridding off depression.  

Even though I sometimes despise the LOOK of the fall and how it is so monochromatic with its gloomy gray overtones, I love the feel of fall.  There is just something in the air.  First of all, it is refreshing to feel a nice cool autumn day after experiencing intense heat waves all summer.   Not only that, but in the first week or so there is an excited feeling in the air as all the kids rush back to class.  Each new school year or new semester brings hope of something new, or for some, hope that this year will be better than the last.  Granted, this feeling only lasts for about a week or two as students get into their routines and see that summer is really over now, and they won’t get another break until December.  

As someone who no longer goes to school, I neither feel the excitement or the doldrums associated with the back to school season.  As someone who works the night shift, I rarely even experience the effect of school zones being back in effect when I drive.  

There are other things that I do like about the fall though.  As someone who lives in Canada and is under the cover of cloud for the vast majority of my life, I have to look past the dark clouds and see the good that comes along with fall.  Here are some things that I love about the fall:

• I am pretty sure I don’t even need to mention it, but Hockey is back!!!! I am going to watch the Canucks Training Camp  at Rogers Arena this weekend.  I am fairly excited as this is the first chance this season for me to wear my Canucks jersey without getting weird looks from people.  For a city that loves their team so much, you think people would be a little bit more open to a girl wearing a Canucks hat or Jersey in the off season.  Come on people!  Show our boys some LOVE!

• I love when the ground gets covered in fallen leaves.  When I was younger, my friend and I used to collect bags and bags of leaves for her mom’s amazing Halloween display at their house.  All of the other houses in the neighbourhood would be decorated weeks in advance, but she did hers the day of.  She always had something new, so the anticipation was high.  We felt so important to have the job of collecting leaves to put all around the yard.  We would take a few garbage bags each and walk up the hill to our school.  We corralled the leaves into nice big piles to put into the bags, but we never put them in the bags right away.  We would pile them conveniently at the bottom of this one retaining wall, and then we would stand on top of the wall and fall down into them.  Whenever I walk through crisp fallen leaves I think of those days.

• After the heat of summer, the autumn air is so wonderfully fresh and clear.  It makes me feel like I have a new set of lungs.  Every breath revitalizes my whole body.

• Call me crazy, but I love the rain.  It may have something to do with having been raised in the lower mainland, but whatever the reason, I don’t care.  The rain falls down and purifies everything.  After a hard rainfall, the trees and fields are ripe with natural aromas, and the skies are clear from horizon to horizon.  It’s wonderful to behold.  Walking in the rain is one of my favourite ways to get things off my mind.  Sometimes when I have something weighing on my heart, I just wish that it would start pouring rain so that I could go outside and just be immersed in the rainfall and let it wash all my worries away.

Even though those dark dreary clouds can be depressing, life isn’t always as bad as it seems.  Sometimes all it takes it for us to take our eyes off the dark clouds and look around at the world we live in, teeming with life all four (two if you live in Canada) seasons of the year.

Thanks for "listening."

Heartcahe all over the World

I have not done a lot of writing lately because I have been bored, tired, and most of what I have witnessed is just so conventional that everyone already knows about it and I would just be restating what most of us have already heard.  That being said, here is what I have thought of what has gone on in our world lately:

The 10 Year Memorial of the 9/11 Attacks:

I have always been very sceptical about the whole idea that jets were hijacked and flown into the buildings.  It is possible, of couse, but it is also insane.  I find it much more believable that the American government at that time (BUSH) was evil and corrupt and didn’t care about his constituents as much as he cared about money.  I am not going to get into this any more than that.  I am just saying, both ideas are possible.  It could have been terrorists, or maybe BUSH is the Terrorists. Who knows, who cares.  The part that really got to me is that regardless of who did this or why, thousands of innocent people died.  People lost their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, cousins, friends, lovers.  I was driving on my way to see a friend, and I was in a great mood.  About 6 minutes before arriving, I heard a clip on the radio that was a compilation of audio recordings from the day of the attacks.  At first I was thinking “I have heard this before.”  But then it kept on going.  The clip was about 5 minutes in length and by the end of it my good mood was shattered and I had tears in my eyes as I drove.  What got to me was hearing the reactions of people on the streets as they witnessed people jumping from the burning buildings, and the voice of a woman recounting the phone call she got from her husband who was on one of the flights that was hijacked.  I can’t even begin to describe the agony I felt on behalf of these men and women.  It breaks my heart.  That kind of thing never goes away.  It never leaves a person’s memory, and we should be praying for the family and friends who are left behind much more often than once a year on the “anniversary” of the deaths of their loved ones.

The AMBER ALERT for Kienan Hebert:

When I first heard about this, my heart went out to this boy’s parents.  I have no children of my own, but I have friends with young children, and if something were to happen to one of them I know how terribly broken up I would be and I am not even the parent.  I think our entire province, and perhaps our entire country was in a state of subdued anxiety until Kienan was returned home to his family.  It makes me sick to know that his abductor broke into his bedroom at night and took him without even being noticed until morning.  This is nothing against the parents at all, but simply against the fact that such evil people exist in our world.  It makes such anger rise up in me.  I am a gentle, loving person, but I feel like I completely understand God’s wrath when I hear about situations like this.  I want nothing more than to see the evil people of the world suffer.  However, it is not my place to judge this man, or the man in Denmark who shot up that camp of children.  The only solace I have is in knowing that these deeds WILL be paid for in this life or the next.

Deaths in the hockey world:

Earlier this year as the Canucks were in round 4 of the Staley Cup Playoffs, my friends and I were downtown watching one of the games.  During the intermission I was saying to one of my friends how I thought it was kind of amazing how there are SO many plane crashes every year, and yet sports teams still choose to fly their entire teams together on the same flight when they travel from place to place.  Of course, it does make sense to have the whole team together so that they can build up their team spirit as they train, travel and play together.  My point was that someday, the odds are that one of those planes will go down and an entire team would be lost.  I said that it would be horrible if it was at the end of the season and a team was in the finals as our beloved Canucks were at the time, and they were to be entirely wiped out.  I wondered then what would happen.  Would the other team be declared the winner?  About a week ago those few thoughts seemed suddenly foolish.  Now that the Russian KHL Lokomotiv Yaroslav team has been completely wiped out, such questions regarding the timing of their deaths, or who would be declared the winner become irrelevant and even offensive.  Of course I had only been speculating on something that had never happened.  The human mind is a curious place.  That being said, the only thing that was going through my mind was how the sports commentators were talking about this being a horrible loss for the hockey world.  SERIOUSLY?  These men were not born hockey players.  They were born humans, and they died humans.  Humans with families and friends who now miss them dearly every day.  Yes, they were all well known world-wide for their athletic ability, but athletes can be replaced.  Eventually, another team will be made up.  Rick Rypien and Derek Boogaard have already been replaced on their teams by other young hockey stars.  Their lives though, those can never be replaced.  Their children will never be able to replace the feeling of their dad tucking them in at night, or wiping the tears from their eyes when they are sad or scared.  These men are just like all of the other people in this world who have died in plan crashes.  They are special people in the eyes of their families.  Though these men were well known athletes, their value is the same as all of the other men and women who died in airplanes and car crashes over the years.  Though the others may go nameless, merely as numbers on a sheet of statistics, their souls are all remembered by God and by their families.

Well, those are my thoughts on all of the depressing things that have gone on in our world recently.  

Thanks for "listening."

Bored Expression

For any of you who have missed having something “interesting” to read, I apologize for my lack of word flow lately.  I have been doing a lot of self reflecting lately, and when I do this I typically do not do a whole lot of writing.  One thing I have noticed about myself is that I have a sort of bulimic personality.  I know that sounds horrible and hilarious all at once, (at least it does to me) but what I mean is that I go through phases (like a bulimic person… eating, not eating etc.)  Those phases become very important to me, and then all of a sudden I lose interest and I stop whatever I have been doing and don’t pick it up again for a while.  Writing is one of those things, as you can now tell.  There are others for me as well, such as eating candy or getting ice caps from Tim hortons, sleeping, exercising, painting, or baking cupcakes.  There are not many interests in my life that do not come in phases for me.  

This is not to say that I do not like those things while I am not engaging in them, I just don’t feel as passionate about them,  I don’t feel motivated to do them or I don’t feel the need for them in my life.  Some of these things can be seen as addictions in the sense that I have an addictive personality.  I find something interesting and then I get right into it and don’t really look back. . . until I lose interest.  Most people with addictive personalities would quickly find something else to fill the void, but I am not like that.  I go through long drought like periods of boredom.  Fatigue seems to take over my entire being, and I feel like I have returned to a state of adolescent apathy. 

One thing that worries me is that when I get really into something, I am hesitant to identify myself as being proficient at that thing.  For instance, I have done a LOT of writing in my life, and I have even written a book.  Even still, I don’t like to call myself a writer because it puts pressure on me to always be into writing.  I clearly am not always into it, as I go through ups and downs with the amount of content flowing through my brain.  I love to dance, but I don’t want to identify myself with being a dancer, because then people will expect me to come with them to clubs and bars etc to go dancing.  It isn’t like that for me.  I have to be in the mood.  I also love to paint, but I only paint what comes to me.  I don’t want to call myself a painter, because then people will expect that I can look at an object and then portray it visually through painting.  I love singing, and I sing ALL the time in my car.  I have written some of my own songs, and I have done karaoke a few times in my day.  I only like to sing when I will not be judged, when I am confident that I will not screw up, or when I am sure that nobody can hear me.  I may have a great voice, but I find it difficult to sing on command.  Singing is an expressive media for me.  It is not a performance piece.  All of the things that I have mentioned, I use them to express myself, not to show off any sort of talent or ability.  If I feel it, I do it, and if I don’t then I don’t want people to expect me to perform just because they know I can do it.  

I don’t know what all of that means about me as a person.  Does it make me broken?  I don’t know.  Does it make me boring?  I don’t care.  We as human beings are complex creatures in an ever changing world.  How any one of us is expected to keep up with the times, or stay fashioned to a specific mould, I do not know.  I would much rather be naturally me and express myself in various forms that are not at all harmful to anyone around me.

Back to the topic of being bored, I find myself to be very back and forth, as I mentioned.  I feel like our world has gotten so busy that it is next to impossible for any of us to slow down and relax to the point where the relaxation takes long term effect on our souls.  The reasons: technology, the pursuit of wealth and status, the need to do everything instantaneously, and avoid anything that may be a nuisance.  

Birth control comes in various forms, some of which make it so that a woman’s period doesn’t come for 3 months, when it should normally come every month.  This is a perfect example of how technology helps us to avoid annoying parts of life.  We want to be able to do everything faster and with less effort.  What ever happened to good work ethic?  This generation walking around with nearly everything that they want at the touch of a button is going to be hard pressed to survive when some huge disaster hits and all technology and services are rendered useless.  We are SUPPOSED to have issues and challenges in our lives!  When we overcome challenges we look back and realize how far we have climbed, and how strong we are.  When harder challenges come our way, we look ahead and see the mountain we face, so we turn around and consider going back to easier times.  That’s when we see all the mountains we have already climbed.  We remember how big those mountains seemed when we were still at the bottom, just like now with this new life challenge.  If we are wise we will also remember how little those mountains seemed once we were standing on top of them.  Without the little struggles in life, we will never build up the muscles to get over the big obstacles.  

Some people say that if we have the mind to create it, then we are obviously supposed to use it – we have the right to use it.  I have to disagree.  My reasoning comes from how we were originally made.  The best example is the gestational period of a human baby.  It takes over nine months for that baby to grow and form all of its intricate parts before it comes into this world.  If a baby is born prematurely, there will undoubtedly be developmental issues.  Similarly, if we always get whatever we want whenever we want it without having to work for it, and be patient for it, then when we have this great thing put into our lap, we are going to be like weak little premature infants who are completely incapable of surviving on their own.  If we always get whatever we want whenever we want it, it is likely that the timing will be off, we will be too immature and irresponsible and when those big mountains come, we will have no idea how to get over them.

Thanks for "listening."

K.I.S.S.

Sometimes I go through “dry spells” in terms of my writing.  It is not that I have nothing going through my mind.  It is actually quite the opposite.  I have all sorts of things that I am pondering and considering, but I also have some important things that I have been doing, namely, getting some “me time.”

In my “me time” I like to do quiet things.  Take naps, cuddle with my cats, work on my fish tank, go to the fish store and look at all the amazing creatures, sit and stare at my fish tank, paint things to put on my walls at home, bake and decorate food to bring to people, cuddle with little kids, play with kids and let my imagination go free like it hasn’t done in over a decade, print out my book and bring copies of it to people to read, wade out into the ocean as far as I can and feel the sand between my toes as the waves flow softly around me. 

All of these are rather quiet things.  Out of that whole list, the only thing that really requires me to utter even one word is when I play with little kids.  This is a totally different kind of speech though.  It is imaginative, creative and free of any inhibitions.  There is no judgment.  I can be as crazy of maniacal as I want, and the more I am, the more the kids love it.  I don’t get funny looks, but instead, I get giggles and hugs.

Another thing that everything on that list has in common is simplicity.  These are all things that I can do for relatively cheap or for free.  They activate things within me that are at the crux of who I am.  They are activities which have been going on for centuries: creating art, engaging in nature, making food, feeding people, bringing people gifts.  These are all simple things that stand the test of time.  They don’t go out of style.  They don’t get old or “uncool.”  They have always been around, and they will be around for as long as this world is any place worth indwelling. 

I am reminded of an acronym that my dad taught me when I was younger: K.I.S.S. which stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”  In other words. “Slow down and stop trying to overdo everything!”  Some things don’t need to be added to, and the more we add to them, the worse they become.  They get heavy and burdened, full of pointless additions that just add weight and make for more work.

In my opinion, the things that matter in life are the things that everyone has access to.  We all have access to people, nature, God and ourselves.  If we would all just cut out all the other unnecessary things in our lives, our world would be so wonderful.  Right now, I am just going to focus on the first two.

People consist of our families, or friends, and even strangers whom we have never met before.  We ALL have the same basic things in common. 

Nature consists of everything in this world that is not made by man – plants, animals, mountains, deserts, rivers, lakes oceans and the sky.  Out of this come other things that we need, like food, shelter and clothing.  Those things should also be kept simple.  They shouldn’t be so over processed.  If we got rid of all the crazy things in our world, we would be able to get back to basics where everyone had their own land that they worked, and we could all provide for ourselves and our families.  Some may think that we have come so far since then, given the lifestyles of some of the affluent, rich people in our world.  The only thing with that is that along with the rich getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.  The divided between us is growing larger and larger all the time, separating us from one of the basic rights that we should all have – access to other human beings.  The rich and the poor are both isolated, just in different ways. 

*** The following are broad stereotypes that do not include every person in either category ***

The rich have no need for anyone because of their wealth, so they live solitary lives void of any meaningful human interaction.  The poor have no outwardly redeeming qualities, making their presence undesirable to the rest of the world.  They too are left void of meaningful human interaction.  What a blessed thing it is to be neither rich nor poor.  It is a blessed state which is becoming rarer for every day that the divide between rich and poor becomes more and more vast. 

The only way that I can see to reverse this process is for everyone to get back to basics.  I just don’t see it ever happening though, and here’s why:  What rich person would give up his riches, or what person would take a poor man under his wing, asking nothing in return?  The poor receive their help, yes, but it is primarily by way of government assistance.  This is a cold interaction, leaving the poor feeling like they are a waste of space, because they are often treated as such by people in government-run programs.  What we need is for people to give their hearts and their financial support to the poor of our world.  To do one or the other is great, but the most powerful combination, in my opinion, would be if the rich of the world would open up their cheque books, and then tap into their humanity and get their hands “dirty” by physically and emotionally reaching out to the less fortunate. 

Thanks for "listening."

For you, Cam :)

I have two friends from high school that I never really hung out with while we went to school together.  One is David, and the other is Cameron (they both follow my blog, how awesome!)  Cameron is the person who won a little contest so I let him have his prize, which was to pick a topic of his choice for me to write about in this blog.  He wanted me to discuss the deaths of Rick Rypien and another young NHL player, but since I already talked about Rick Rypien and Jack Layton, I asked him if he had anything else in mind.  He couldn’t think of anything, so he said “ME!”  I laughed a bit to myself, and to his surprise, I agreed.

As I said, Cameron is one of my friends whom I met in high school.  After leaving high school, I was dating a certain person, and this certain person happened to be a distant relative of Cam. We found this out because I went with my boyfriend to join his family for Christmas, which was being held at his cousin’s place.  Cameron also went with his own family for Christmas to HIS cousin’s place.  Now, my then boyfriend and Cameron were not at all related, they just had a common cousin.  I don’t know exactly how it went in this particular situation, but pretty much what it would look like is this:

One of my then boyfriend’s parents’ siblings would have to have been married to one of Cameron’s parent’s siblings.  That couple had a child, making it the cousin of both Cameron and of my then boyfriend.  At any rate, I had not seen Cameron in about two years, and I had never really interacted much with him when I had seen him before.  Seeing him here, now was a bit weird. 

A few years later, I ended up running into Cameron yet again.  This time, we both ended up going to the same Bible college.  To add to this, we both were commuter students, driving from the same city, for classes that started at the same time in the morning.  When we first “ran into” each other, it was on the high way on our way to school.  I saw him pass me, and then I passed him.  He kept following me all the way off the highway and down the main road, and then into the parking lot for the school.  I was a bit weirded out by this until he also followed me to the main building, books in hand – which was when I realized that he was a student as well.  (Of course he was… duh!)

At this point, Cameron and I had run into each other a few times over the years, leading us both to believe somewhere deep down that we were destined to be friends.  One day, a Canucks game day, Cameron and I both showed up for class wearing Canucks jerseys.  After this, we had an endless supply of things to talk about.  It has been a few years since then, but Cameron has been one of my most faithful hockey friends.  I have a few friends whom I consider to be my “hockey friends” and this is because our friendship is based around one thing: our love for hockey, more specifically the Vancouver Canucks.  Our friendships tend to be rather seasonal.  Cameron, however, is different.  I know this because it is summer, and I have actually had contact with him.  We went for lunch a couple weeks ago and we had things to talk about other than hockey, although we did talk about how the off season seems to be taking its jolly time this year (even though it is one of the shortest off seasons in Canuck history.) 

I guess what I am trying to say out of this is that you never know where your friends might come from.  In high school, we didn’t interact at all other than the occasional casual hello in the hallways.  Now, I would consider Cameron to be a good friend of mine.  We may not see each other very often, and we may come together for the very obvious reason of hockey, but there is more to it.  We trust each other, and there is a loyalty there that goes beyond the hockey season and into deeper matters of the soul.  Sorry if this sounds all gushy.  I just love my friends, and this is an opportunity for me to brag about how awesome one of them is.  Cameron, you rock.  Thank you for being my friend even when there are no hockey games on for us to talk about :P  In the words of Paul Rudd, “I love you, man!” 

Thanks for "listening."

I'm a writer!!! (woohoo)

Today I feel like a true writer.  I have been at home ALL day working on finishing touches for my book.  This is not even a draft that is going to an editor or a publisher.  It is just so that I can get it out into the world to see what people think of it.  At any rate, I have been working on this for a long time, and today I am wearing grubby clothes, I am unshowered, my hair is a mess, I didn’t brush my teeth until my Dad showed up at my place to pick up a copy of the book, I have barely eaten anything all day, and I have a bit of a headache and a sore back from sitting at my computer all day working on this, my baby.  This is where the idea of a “starving artist” comes from, I am sure.  Not only have I invested time and money into this, but I have gotten no money from it yet, and I have spent so much time on it that I neglect to remember that I need to eat to stay alive.  Oops.

That is just my own personal physical state.  You should see my apartment.  There are papers all over the floor in different piles: a pile for title pages, a pile for each copy of book, a pile for pages I need to reprint because I hole punched the wrong side, a pile for pages covered in random characters that the printer spewed out while it was possessed by some evil spirit, and of course a pile for recycling (almost as big as the piles for the copies of the books.)

I can hardly believe it took this long, but I have been printing books out for a few hours now, and only now does my cat decide that she wants to help.  *Insert images of YouTube cats here*