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22nd May 2009

best comic ever

best comic ever

http://xkcd.com/587/
crime_scene

My favorite episode:

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1st February 2009

perfect month

When I was a little girl, I was a weird little girl, who scoured calenders and discovered that the magical month of February, so abused and maligned for its cold, frigid days and single-awareness event, had the potential of being a perfect month, filling equally every spot in a 4 week calendar in a beautiful rectangle when the 1st fell on a Sunday. I remember using my computer and plotting out which years this would happen. It was a rather rare occurance, because leap year would happen and mess everything up (stupid leap year) and honestly, I thought I would never see it; I’d be old and withered like when Halley’s comet comes again.

February 1998 was a perfect month. I was 19. Feburary 2009 is a perfect month. I am (appropriately, some would say) 11 years older now. And I still get just a little bit of a thrill seeing the calendar on the side of my blog that is a perfect 7X4 rectangle. I am not determined to fill up every single one of those squares with a perfect link. 🙂 I told you I was a weird child.

***

I’m on call today, which so far hasn’t been bad. I even managed to slip in a nap; since I didn’t get to bed last night until 1 am (serious grousing over the single LDS male population here), it was needed. I’m back at the private hospital this month. I had forgotten its many quirks and frustrations, such as the complete incompetence to deal with neurological problems (it’s a sad state of affairs when I come here and feel like an expert) and the complete unwilliness to do anything without a bloody consult. There’s one episode that I’m still fuming about because it’s utter mismanagement of this patient and I am powerless to do anything. I hear bad-mouthing of academic centers all of the times because part of the care is given by relatively inexperienced interns and residents. True, but we have supervision by attendings who keep up on the research and for whom money is not the driving force. I’d rather receive care, any day, at a academic center.

*deep breath*

On the happy side of things, I get out most days by 1-2 pm and I usually sleep on call. Yay! Oh, cold, deceiving sun, how I have missed you! I have so many goals to achieve this month. Finally getting time to explore my camera a bit. Taking down my Christmas tree. Going to the gym (really don’t like my gym. It makes it difficult to get inspired to go there). Watercolor painting some of my photos. Sew my regency era dress. Clean my kitchen. Do my taxes. Study for the neurology in-training exam (that probably ought to be the number one priority, but somehow it’s not). There’s no way everything getting done, but it is awfully nice to have the extra time that I can dream about filling.

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25th November 2008

I went over to a friend’s house tonight to have some hot cocoa and catch up. She’s a medical student, which I know exactly how overwhelming and consuming and exaperating that can be. Talking to her reminding me of all of the drama that med school can entail (I’m so glad I’ve left that behind!!) She’s been in much the situation that I was in those many years ago with Chris and Candice, only she’s in Candice’s position and another mutual friend is right where I was 5 years ago–stuck in the middle and not sure how to get out. Their friendship has been strained to say the least and it’s been bothering me. I do really regret how things turned out between Candice and I, this failed friendship. Years have gone by, she has barely acknowledged my existence since that day (although, she’s friends with Chris on Facebook and contacts him occasionally there. Kinda burns me up a little. He’s the one who broke your heart, honey!) and my experience in med school was radically changed after that. Her friends were no longer my friends, I was excluded from a lot of activities and Chris became the inseparable chum.

In any case, I kinda made it my mission to intervene here because I could see the direction it was going. Don’t know if I did any good (I felt a little like a matchmaker); we’ll see. I’m not sure if an intervention would have helped our friendship then either–I did try on multiple occasions to reach out and explain and was met with deaf ears.

Med school: junior high all over again.

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12th November 2008

Poetry: Faye George

Once upon a time (a really long while ago), there was a poetry meme that went around and I found the most beautiful little poem entitled “ Like Anne Shirley’s House“, which, unsurprising, completely captivated me.

I’ve since become a fan of Faye George’s poetry in general, at least those that I can find online. The language is sparse but rich in imagery. Here are two that I’ve especially liked.

ONLY THE WORDS

No one cares:

not the professor
of rhetoric
bored by all
but his own experience;

not the editor
who, in at least
two languages,
has heard it all;

not even
your good friend
who does her best
to listen;

only the words–
the words that rise
from their accustomed tasks
to lead you

deliberately
through ferns
and phonemes
into the woods,

where you must dig
for roots,
fish from the deepest part
of the stream.
-Faye George

WHY THE GOOSE WENT BACK

I miss the scrape of spiked boots on the groundsel
at evening, the iron creak and slam of the door.
The stroke and pet of his hard hand gave the days
their meaning. Jack, can you understand?

In dreams I return beyond the beanstalk, fly
to my old home in the clouds.
Here it is safe, but the thought he needs me
pecks at the eye of peace.

I yearn for the oaken sound of his stride.
What you call bondage,
I would purchase with my last gold ounce.
For the smell of leather and mead, I would sell
my soul.

-Faye George

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7th August 2008

cooking adventures

(Notice the date… written last week and accidentally posted now.)

Chicken spagetti made with spinach and yogurt is an interesting combination. Not bad, really, but it took a couple of bites.

This started out as an attempt to make chicken tikka masala. But I’m missing ingredients for this new recipe I found (there is an appalling lack of ginger in my house), and I couldn’t let the chicken go to waste and I’m rather infatuated with cooking with yogurt recently (I think I perfected my salmon recipe), so… the above was the result.

I’m not sure that I’ll be repeating it soon.

So, my mother noted that I haven’t been updating my LJ and called in a panic on Sunday to make sure that I was alive. To alleviate those other worries about my safe-being, yes, I’m alive. I’m just bored and have little to talk about. Okay, I do have things to say: I’ve got a post brewing about the Vienna Teng concert that I went to on Tuesday which may have even been better than her first concert two years ago (her music makes me want to write in purple prose. I love it!). I’m still not a clinic person and I’m really glad that I didn’t go into orthopedic surgery (sample of the conversation today: “Is [he/she] on pills? [He/She] sounds like someone who would be on pills” – referring to antidepressant medications. And this gem to a young, but overweight patient coming in for referral “So, is this you? I mean, when we do the operation is this what I have to deal with?” UGH. Please note that this is not an attack or rant against orthopedics or surgeons in general. My favorite, most inspiring doctor in the entire world is an orthopedic doc. Because of my bone disease, I have to see them periodically as a patient, and the number of muscles and ligaments that they have to know thwarted me in med school and hasn’t gotten much better. That said, this particular orthopod was a jerk.)

My new blog s almost, almost ready for its unveiling. I’m trying to figure out the heading, and once that’s done, I need to transfer all of LJ entries over (which I keep putting off in the hopes that somebody will figure out how to import moods and current music fields. Tags would be nice too), and then it’ll be ready. I think. I can’t tell you how much effort this has been. I started working on it back in March, messed something up, deleted it, started again in May, deleted, repeated about 3 times in June and finally got the current version partially running in July… just in time for the upgrade of wordpress to 2.6. *sigh* I’ve devoted much of my spare time over the last two weeks to figuring it out. Most of my problems have been related to the fact that I know next to little about webdesign… the little I taught myself for my little website was all HTML (and sloppy HTML at that) and that has been long since forgotten. WordPress does make it easier in that most everything is run through plugins, but if something goes wrong (and it always does), then I had to dig through the code to figure out what was up. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to expand out the default size of the comments once they’ve been posted and how to get the UserPhoto working so that it actually shows up inside the comments, rather than haphazardly across the page as it currently is wont to do. I’ve given up on that for the moment (unless of course some computer programming brainiac out there might know the answer!) and have accepted that my blog won’t look quite the way that I want it to. At least at this point.

But, Julia, why the switch, I hear some of your asking (I’m psychic, did I tell you?). There’s a variety of reasons (I like lists):

– One, I’ve got a lot of friends and family who read this journal and don’t have a LJ themselves, and I don’t think any of them enjoy replying as an “anonymous.”

– Two, I have been rather disgruntled by the change in management styles and the addition of advertisement across all of the pages, and while I completely and totally understand that this is a for-profit business and they can do whatever they want, that doesn’t mean that I have to support it with my money.

– Three, I’ve been paying for my own web domain for over 4 years now. I probably won’t ever finish my LOTR Inklings project, but the thought of giving it up breaks my heart. So this is a little bit of a compromise and allows me some relief of the guilt of money wasted.

– Four, WordPress has some nifty, nifty functions, like a picture gallery plugin that’s even prettier than Flickr and customizable sidebar widgets.

– Five, I don’t know if you all are aware, but there’s been some backlash and criticism to physician blogging, thanks to a couple of articles in the LA Times, the NY times, and JAMA. I’m such a lurker and rarely update my other medical blog, so I’m not showing up on anybody’s radar, but I like the idea of being able to more closely control who is seeing what I write. And while LJ has this great feature of being able to friendslock an entry, that doesn’t change problem #1. WP allows me to register readers.

– Six. I can’t recall what the sixth reason is. It probably doesn’t matter.

I’m not leaving LJ, no worries. All of my entries will be cross-posted to both, the entries here will just be much more censored and locked down. And I’ll still be active in reading my friends’ LJ, although comments are still expected to be sparse.

The problem with wordpress is that it is a blog. LJ is great because it’s a journal, my journal. I can write down everything, regardless if it has a purpose. But a blog conveys that posts have themes and reasons, and I’m not sure that I like that. I’ve tried writing a couple of pure medical blogs and failed miserably. We’ll see.

I might go camping tomorrow. Yay! That is, if I manage not to get called in for back-up call and I get out of clinic on time.

And I don’t want to go to clinic in the morning.

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27th October 2005

Protected: Details

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2nd April 2005

Strictly Ballroom screencaps

Yet another movie that is impossible to find caps from!

Samples and links

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24th January 2005

LOTR ramblings – wow, it’s been awhile.

Am very bummed and am feeling like a very bad fan-girl.

Apparently, Elijah Wood was within mere miles of me, at a premiere that I could have attended, if I had of realized that he would be there. But the only celebrity news I had heard of Sundance was that Paris Hilton was going to be there, and I really have very little desire to meet her. Elijah and the other Hobbits are a different story.

*Pouts* And I just know that he was supposed to bump into me and fall instantly in love. That’s the only thing that’s been holding us back.

To top it off, I missed seeing the premiere of “Ringers: Lord of the Fans” because I was out of town when the tickets went on sale. I’m hoping that I can grab some same day tickets on Thursday, but I’m not holding my breath. However, Ellie, you’d better keep those toes crossed!

There’s pics on the slamdance website of my LOTR friends here in their costumes at the premiere. *sigh* I haven’t been able to go to a meeting in months. I miss the lembas bread. And raving about Tolkien.

In fact, I miss my Tolkien group online too, my LOTR Inklings. We started reading LOTR again and it just fizzled. I know I didn’t help matters by taking forever to get my chapter out and I’ve been a perfectly lousy list mommy. But I’ve been working on my webpage and hope that tomorrow, I will have all of Book 1 finished, and at least the index page looking nice. And since I’ve had to reformat all of the emails into a readable, pretty webpage, I’ve been reading all of our old discussions. I’m just amazed all over again of the insights we discovered together, the life lessons, the ties into mythology that left me astonished. I’m lost as to how to reactive the group to get that again. I’m hoping that the website will help – having all of the basic pages actually say something and actually have something to which you could navigate would probably be nice.

I suppose I could just let it die naturally, but I am really reluctant to do so. We really had something, something that I haven’t found in another group. But maybe, it’s just like everything else in my life and I don’t know how to say goodbye. Any ideas?

Enough pointless fretting about something that nobody wants to read anyway. It is definitely time for bed!

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7th January 2004

Whee!

Look what I did today:

Like Never Before has been updated with chapter 9. You can read it here: Like Never Before And you can always review it here… (okay, shameless plug over).

I really enjoyed writing this chapter. It was immensely satisfying and I really hope that it worked as well as it felt to me.

AND…. Big project number two:

Sneak peak for those who had endure my shrieks of frustration–I got it figured out!!!

LOTR Inklings

Of course, none of the links work and I still have problems with some of my style sheets (at the bottom of the page does it look like random numbers and symbols or Elvish script gibberish… it ought to look like the later, but there’s a buggy someplace). Can you see the menu on the left side–if you can’t please comment and let me know… that’s what I’ve spent the last week figuring out.

But I have a home page!

Whoa, it’s really late. I gotta get to bed–car ride is coming in about 6 hours now… Gah!

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3rd January 2004

A wail for help. HHHHEEEELLLLPPPPP!!!!

Okay, I admit it. This sucks.

I’m frustrated and angry and about to throw this helpless (but not harmless, oh no!) computer out the window.

I feel old and it’s not a nice feeling. Mind you, I’m (only?) 25, but technology-wise, it looks like I’m ancient. Withering. Decrepit. Stoop. Frail. I’ve never felt so ignorant in my entire life. It’s like, no matter how hard I try, how much stuff I read, this will remain a black hole, a taunting enigma that just stands there and laughs at me.

I was going to lj-cut this, but I’m too tired to even remember that code, so here ya go:

“The Rant on the Evilness of Webpages”

I’ve been working for the past five days on the website that I (foolish mortal) am trying to design for my group, Lord of the RIngs Inklings (see my info for link, I’m too tired to type in the address). I’ve worked on it, off and on for the past six months, and saw Christmas break as the perfect time to get it all coded and ready to go for our two year anniversary on the 5th.

I started out formatting the compiled messages from our book discussions. Two days later (and we’re talking working 12-13 hours straight), I’ve finished 6 chapters. Out of around 60. I’m faster, it’s true, the major of the time was spent on the first chapter, but still.

Got bored. Decided that I probably ought to update the links on my templates, so do that. Realize that I’ve designed the templates wrong, so changes don’t work. Try to fix template and ruin every file that used that template, yep you guessed it–all of my work of the last two days. Manage to recover most of it, but now fully aware that I have to build new templates and copy, by hand, all of my hard work over.

Frustrated. Decide that I ought to put in the buttons and drop down menus and the “ooooo” of the page–a vertical, rollover menu navigation bar. Download the file for that one… And I can’t make out a single word of what it says, what I’m supposed to change, etc. I’ve cobbled my way to a basic understanding of HTML, but apparently, JavaScript is completely different.

Spend last two days, browsing the web, learning JavaScript, or at least patching my way to a workable code for the buttons and the drop down menus (yeh!). Found a place that will give me the code for my guestbook, so I don’t have to worry about that (I’ll believe it when I see it).

But I wanted my beautiful vertical rollover menu navigation menu, gosh darn it. Went back to the site, found their (poorly written) references, and basically looked up every single code and what it meant and how to change it. Followed instructions. Painstakingly typed in every single link. Put it where they told me and….

Nothing.

Not a thing. I can’t see anything. I’m not getting an error message, except from Safari, who thinks that there’s some file that doesn’t exist. Now, even the template that came with the package doesn’t work.

Five solid days of hard work and absolutely nothing to show for it. And I’ve just made you read through all of this programing crap that you probably don’t care one iota about. But if you’ve made it this far….

I need help.

If there’s anybody out there, who stumbles across this and understands JS/HTML and Dreamweaver and could look over my code and figure out where I’ve gone wrong, wow, I’d go and register a star under your name. Or write you a really sappy poem. Or whatever. We’re talking “give up the first-born” desperate. Just email me, post a comment, and I’d send you the files all wrapped in eternal gratitude.

On the plus side, I’ve finished my next chapter of LNB. I have to let my sister read it and tell me what she thinks, but it should be posted by the end of this weekend. It’s short, only 12 pages instead of 18. 🙂

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3rd December 2003

The dead will arise and speak again…

Wow, do you realize that the last time I posted here was back in August?? I realized that today was December, December 2nd my calendar tells me. I’m not really sure what happened to September and October and November–are you sure we really even had a November?

First of all, updates: Yes, to those few people who know what I’m talking about, I’m still working on my Gilmore Girls story, Like Never Before. Honestly, I swear. I’m working on chapter 8 and have been (bit by painful bit) for the past three months. It’s sixteen pages long now, sixteen pages and I think I hate it. Which is funny, because when I first started thinking about this story a year and a half ago, this was one of the major chapters of why I wanted to put my ideas to paper. But right now, it’s hitting too close to home. I’ve had a hard time writing this fight scene and having such an easy resolution, when I know from hard, personal experience that it never goes this smoothly. Even when you’re trying so hard to communicate, things still get mired and knotted. And yet, to change it, would just lengthen the story out even longer. If it wasn’t necessary to move the “plot” along, I’d just trash it. I have one scene left. One scene that’s probably less than two pages long, but do you think I can write it? NOOOOO! Stupid story.

Update number two: And I’ve been once again hit by the drabble bug, so look for an update to my drabbles, as well as some LOTR ones–I’ve got an inkling to write a Eomer drabble, and I don’t know where that one came from!! As of yet, no one has taken my drabble challenge, although Agent M at ff.net wrote a perfectly delightful one entitled Tana and Kirk. Read it, it’s fabulous.

And speaking of drabbles, I just finished reading The Da Vinci Code and really really enjoyed it. The author did an incredible amount of research to justify every one of his theories and well as add layers and layers of details and symbolism. I feel like I need to read it again, just to understand all of the symbolism. Right after I read it, I stumbled across another of fileg‘s beautiful drabbles that struck me as ironically appropriate: Earth, Water, Fire, Air. Read the Arwen drabble….And then do yourself a favor and go and read the rest of fileg’s stories and see why I love her writing so much.

Update number three: We’re starting to discuss The Hobbit on my Tolkien discussion group. I just posted the first five chapters of musings and thoughts, the next five chapters will be done by this weekend. I hope to get all the way through it before RETURN OF THE KING opens….Can anybody guess how excited I am??? Today, I saw one of the tv trailers for the first time and it induced the “moment-of-silence” followed by “utter-squeal-of-excitement.”

Um, yeah. That’s all the business I guess. School’s been kicking my butt, mostly because I’ve become so apathetic towards it. I cannot wait for Christmas. One of my best friends is flying in and spending almost two weeks with me!! I have two lovely weeks with no classes, no endless hours of studying the disease processes of anemia or the electrical circuits of the heart, no trying to avoid certain people because things have gone so horribly wrong. Nothing but sweet, delightful boredom.

And I had to laugh. Last week, driving home for Thanksgiving dinner, I heard the new Evanescence single, My Immortal, and completely, totally, head over heels fell in love with it. Seriously, it was one of those songs that caused an emotional reaction where I felt the words and music just beating in my veins. I haven’t been able to get enough of the song since then. And what was the quote from GG tonight “And those who bring Evanescence will be severely mocked.” Yeah, I’m ridiculous.

Only 14 more days until ROTK!!!!!!!!! Just wait until the day before, then I’ll be shouting it!

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13th August 2003

Muse and musings

Airports, airplanes are wonderful things. Seriously, think about it–you get to your destination in a small fraction of the time it would take you to drive, you don’t have to worry about packing our car, or where you put the map, or the crazy drivers on their cell phones, and you share a seat with someone who inevitably is defined by the word “interesting”–and for some reason (the cheesy side of me is saying it’s because in a plane you’re high enough to brush the angels’ wings…ugh, I’m making myself ill), inspiration flows, your muse becomes yours again.

A few weeks ago, I flew to Washington, DC, probably my favorite city in the world. Some day I’ll live there, just off of Rock Creek Park on Connecticut Avenue. But I digress. I had layovers on the way there in St. Louis and on the way back in Houston, nice long layovers. I brought my notebook, my “Pilot P-700” blue ink pen, and a three mixed CDs that I had made the night before–so with Eva Cassidy, Matchbox 20, Loreena McKinnett and, yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Musical playing in my ears, I wrote. Mostly on my story, Like Never Before. I wrote most of chapter 7, the first scene of 8, the last scene of 12 and polished up 9. Not bad for a few hours on a plane, eh? I’m so excited about it! The chapters are coming together just as I had hoped and I’ve received a little more encouragement (thanks guys!), which just makes the juices flow better and sweeter. Boy, i really am waxing crony tonight, aren’t I? 🙂 🙂

I posted Chapter 7 last night. My sister read it, declared it perfect, then proceeded to lecture me of how random the scene with Jamie was. I was afraid of that. I rewrote it a little and I hope it flows a little better, but it’s extremely important that it happen this way. I hope most people can forgive me for Jamie. Jamie is such a foreign character to me–we’ve seen him, twice, and yet Paris and he have this “relationship”???

Jamie doesn’t have a last name, does he?

In any case, I should have chapter 8 done shortly (fingers crossed), as long as I don’t get distracted by my other project: I’m designing a webpage! Now, I know basic, basic, basic HTML–I know what < i > and < b > mean, for example, but I’ve never designed a site from scratch. It’s for my Lord of the Rings literary discussion group–we just finished reading LOTR together, and I’m trying to compile all of our ponderous thoughts and discussions and put them on an easily navigational site. I made our logo today, which I’m really impressed with–it’s exactly what I was hoping for. I’d proudly display it, but I have no idea how to attach an image if it’s not on the web. Now to figure out how add drop-down graphics and lay out a table. Ah, right now, I am really loving life.

10 days until I start school again. I think I’ve completely forgotten all of my “doctoring skills.” Oh dear.

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15th June 2003

The first impression

Gee, I feel as nervous as if I was on a date (oh, how would I know–my memory of my last date doesn’t go back that far, but go with me here). I’ve spent all this time preparing my LJ page, so that it looked nice and pretty, and now I’m sitting around, wondering if my “date” will show up. Well, in any case, I’ve enjoyed this.

Although LJ could make it a lot easier on their customers if they put a HTML color wheel on their page so I didn’t have to go track one down. Thank the stars for dogpile (my favorite search engine).

Events of the day: made spring rolls for lunch with mom. Tried sauteing the shrimp with ginger–a little strong (less next time), but very good. Wrapped in rice paper with red leaf lettuce, cucumber, shredded carrots, mint leaves and cilantro, dipped in soy sauce. Very flavorful. Much better with the peanut sauce though.

Worked on Chapter 6 and 7 of my Gilmore Girl story, Like Never Before. Still not sure about the name change, heck I keep calling it Life is for Learning, one of the many that I went through. I prefer Songbird, but I’ve gotten so few reviews that I’m hoping the name change will induce some more comment. I shouldn’t feel too bad about it–those who have read it have honestly loved it, so I can’t feel too self-conscious, but seriously, when I see all of those unbearable stories out with with poor grammar and missing plots and fake characters and they have 200 reviews, I get a little jealous. So if you want to make me happy, go read my stories at http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=219204 and review.

Chapter 6 is coming along well. I just have scene left (out of a three scene chapter, I guess that’s not saying much). I’ve been hung up on some of the descriptions. Only I would care enough about trying to get the description of a restaurant that I’ve never been to absolutely perfect. Oh, I hope to finish it tomorrow.

FF.net finally up and working again. Finally I can catch up on some of my favorites. Holly Gilmore updated both of her stories, “Previously on Gilmore Girls” and “This Feeling That Remains,” (GG)

Pick out my engagement ring this morning. After setting up my account at theknot.com, with Daffy Duck as the groom, I decided that I hated all of their choices of rings and went and explored for my own. I’m seriously considering a three diamond ring with a purple diamond in the center, crowned by two clear, and amethyst along both sides. Had no idea until today that there were such things as purple diamond. I really like the light ones–good thing, they’re the cheapest, eh? So, I have the ring, I have the dress. Now, I just need the guy. One who’s very understanding of my purple devotion. 🙂

LOTR link for the moment: http://www.lordoftherings.net. They finally have new pictures for ROTK up!! Woohoo! Okay, so they’ve been up for a month, I’ve just been busy. I really wish they’d coming out with the trailer already. (grumble, grumble). My LOTR group has been silent recently. Will need to look around for more things to discuss.

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    • Books read October-December 01/01/2024
      My goal was to read 120 books this year. I just finished number 129. (Some of these I reviewed as part of my WWW posts). October: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I had high expectations for this book, as it had been so praised, and I felt let down by it. Still enjoyable, […]