Bride for Sale! Ooo! Pretty Julia!

(Typed yesterday. Apparently all it took was connecting his internet to my computer. Sometimes I amaze myself.)

I am an extremely private person.

Those of you who have been reading this journal might be surprised to hear that, seeing as I am usually open and excessively verbose on this forum, but it’s true. Two and a half years ago, when I started this journal, I never foresaw that I would use it in such a way. At first, this was a place where I could update my faithful readers on the progress of my stories, or rant about not getting reviews, or expound on events in the world. Quickly, that mutated and became my actual journal–the place where I recorded my daily events and inner thoughts–things that I actually wasn’t telling friends in real life.

In conversation, I’m more than likely to start asking questions to my partner, and I rarely volunteer information (you’ll find that’s true if you IM with me as well!). You ask, I’m more than willing to answer (and then I talk too much!) — but you have to ask first. Part of it’s probably leftover from high school damage, the other is probably my personal psychological issues. I’m not really an introvert because I love being around people and I can usually charm anybody and expound on any issue. But I don’t talk about my current crushes, my dating life, my frustrations and insecurity–unless it’s 3 o’clock in the morning when I’m weak and vulnerable–then I’ll spill all of my secrets. (That’s why, besides the religious/spiritual reasons, that I will never touch alcohol. If sleepiness can make me so inhibited, I hate to think what alcohol would do). In college, Susan got me to talk, Sam and Liz can once in a while, but otherwise, I’m pretty close-lipped–I don’t even tell Chris half of what I say here!

Talking to the “outside world” has been different. This LJ has really allowed me to open up and be myself completely. As much as I care about all of you in friendlist land, I still don’t have to see your faces, your reactions after you read my entries, and that makes it easier, a little less personal. I can still pretend that I’m writing to myself in my private little journal, while getting the gratification of response and insight from other people–who don’t personally know who I’m talking about. And I can indulge myself in my gushings about fandom related stuff – something that I really try to rein in with real conversations for the sanity of all. It’s been perfect, I’ve made close friends, developed my writing skills, and found the vent that I needed.

Why am I saying all of this? Becka and I were talking yesterday about courage, taking chances and being open.–she’s been an amazing role model for that. I still can’t go up to any current crushes and demand that they notice me, but I did decide to make one very big, courageous (and completely unrelated) move for me.

My friends had been bugging me to tell them about all of my interviews and trips–and every time I opened up an email window, I froze. I couldn’t figure out how to say what I wanted to say–even though I had already said it here. It seemed so mechanical to write “and then I did this, and I decided this.” I thought about cutting and pasting from LJ–but so much of what’s been going on has been a process that it would have been a really really long email!

So for the first time, I made my entries public (for the time being. It makes me nervous being completely exposed to the crazies out there) … and I told my real life friends about my blog and pointed them all here.

Plethora, dear friends of mine, welcome to the ramblings and insights of Julia. I’m really nervous about this, much like if I had handed over my personal diary and read over your shoulder, watching your reactions. I hope you’re not too offended with me for keeping this from you. Feel free to make yourself at home–comment if you like, say hi to everyone else, get an LJ so I can make you legitimate and friend you properly. In some ways, I think I may have to ignore your presence until I get used to this–don’t take it personally, it’s just going to take me some time to adjust.

(More stories to come, including the excitement of 12 standardized patients in 6 hours plus 30 minutes for a “light meal” and another 15 minutes of break, where they threw away my cookie. Meanies. But I think I passed.)

I love my flist. I really really do.

I know you guys are wanting the whole scoop on what’s happened, but I’m not able to find the words to describe the whole depth of the problem. Let’s just say that messing up chances for a letter of recommendation because of her stupidity, finding out that the other letter is somewhere in limbo and she’s got only a few days to find it (and nobody’s responding to emails), and realizing that she didn’t have a back up plan for anything, put Julia in a depressive funk that she hasn’t seen since the summer of 2001.

Right now, I’m scrambling to pick up pieces, eating humble pie and literally begging people to help me fix this. It’s not fun, and I’ve been in tears for the past two nights, knowing that I brought this on myself. One mistake brought the whole pile down…

On a positive note, I ran into my “arch nemesis” today, and we had our only friendly conversation in the last two years, since the infamous cafeteria blowup. It reminded me that at one time we were friends…. It was nice, and it gave me a niggle of hope.

And side note: Tay (fileg), have you been having problems responding to a journal? I’ve had difficulty once I click on, say an LJ-cut, and read the entry itself–it’s like my browser doesn’t recognize the HTML. No problems if I click to respond on my friends page view. Similar problems with you?

Found out about the attack from a television, while checking a surgical wound. It felt surreal. It still does.

Hugs, thoughts and prayers to those who were affected by these events. Special prayers and hugs to Ali (watcher_junior)–I hope your family, friends and other loved ones are safe.

Thanks to all of my wonderful flist for your support and caring. I love you guys. Really, truly.

I’m better. Sleep is a wonderful thing, as is resignation and realization. I studied harder for that test than I have all year long. I read up on every single one of my patients, on their diseases and how to treat them. I even relearned for the fifth time how to read EKGs and blood gases. I knew it–the basics, even crazy diseases. So I don’t know how 66% of everybody who took it did better than me, but it wasn’t for anything that I did.

And it’s just a grade right? *sigh*

I have to start applying for residencies this weekend–get my CV (curriculum vitae for those who don’t know–I didn’t until a few months ago) turned into the central processing place (oh joy), prepare my personal statement and get a list of three things that are “fantastic” about me to give to the Dean of the school, so that when she can write all kinds of wonderful things about me to send to the schools. Plus, I still have that research paper to work on, and I’m dog tending. So much for my holiday. Grr.

Went and saw War of the Worlds today. Hate contributing to opening weekend sales, especially after all of the Tommy fiascoes, but it was the one movie that Chris hadn’t seen and he owed me — that dog I’m housesitting? Yeah, he was supposed to take care of it, but he forgot and made plans to go to Jackson Hole. And did I mention that I’m not so fond of dogs?! The movie wasn’t so bad–properly intense in places and I was sitting on the head of my seat through a good portion of it. Melissa told me that sitting next to me with all of my gasps and freakouts made her more nervous than the movie did. The little kid’s screaming got very annoying very early on, and the ending felt rather abrupt and lackluster (although the explanation was cool). And Tom was rather flat… Sometime good, but eh.

Surgery rotation starts in four days. There are not words to describe how much I’m dreading this. I just about killed myself with two weeks! *pouts* So, I’ll definitely have to make some time for chatting on Sunday, because it’s going to be a long time before I get to do that.

Yes, if I was a lemming, I’d jump off the cliff too–we’d have such a great time on the fall down!

Comment and I’ll tell you something I adore about you.
Afterwards, copy and paste this into your own journal.

Anybody, even if you feel like we don’t know much about each other yet… There are reasons that you’re on my flist.

ETA: Ran out of time tonight. Will continue tomorrow, so if I haven’t gotten to you, be patient!

I’m the first one on my flist to do this!

User Picture collage

I am truly fascinated by this thing called the Internet…

Today, I was wasting time (my favorite past-time) exploring LJ looking for some Star Trek: Voyager icons (unfortunately good ones seem to be a particularly rare species) and just started clicking on links taking me to different people’s journals.

It’s astonishing how much people reveal of their lives… some blatantly, others in obscure threads throughout their posts. I mean, granted I talk a lot about my personal life–but a good portion of it is put into friend posts–where I can control who sees it.

What’s more amazing is that some of them don’t seem bothered by the fact that they have 500 people that they don’t know reading and commenting on their day to day lives… Take for example epicyclical. I stumbled onto her journal because it’s the personal/HP LJ of the woman who wrote the hilarious “Very Secret Diaries of LOTR.” Her “friends of” list has 2706 people!!

I like it that people are so honest with strangers. It makes me feel good about this world–that (at least when there’s some anonymity) we do allow others to see exactly who we are. I find it fascinating.

On that note: how many of you have RL people reading your journal? Does it make you write different things than you normally would?

A particular gem from http://www.thisfish.com. Her motto is the best:

It’s lovely to be a feminist and all. I have gotten in plenty a tizzy over the inequity of the female role in this bizarre universe. Have even tried out the independent, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” track, and been quite good at it. Eventually, however, I settled upon this conclusion:

This fish needs a bicycle.

If not for comfort, at least for entertainment’s sake.

I think I am such a fish too…

~~~~~~

(Since I seem to need updating before I ever get an entry posted)

Spent the evening in tears.

Now, now, don’t get worried. I wasn’t (entirely) depressed or heart-broken. In fact, I paid money for these tears.

I just saw Howard Shore conduct his Lord of the Rings Symphony!! With a full choir and children’s choir. A young soprano male with the voice of an angel. And a background of the art and sketches of Alan Lee and John Howe.

I got emotional walking into the hall (a big feat for me actually–am terrified of building and I went alone) where a small group of musicians performed the Fellowship theme. And it just got better from there. It was amazing seeing it “live”–the artwork was amazing and part of it felt like this must have been when HS was first writing it–just going off the artists’ ideas.

Got teary during the sweet Shire music. Cried during the Fellowship themes. And openly bawled during Into The West. Wearing mascara was not the best idea. Looked like raccoon.

Only one complaint: it was too short!

This is probably silly of me…

I was just thinking about my journal and the online friends that I have and it struck me… Most of you, I have no idea what you look like! It is strange, how the internet works, how we make close relationships, where we can talk about our interests in common and life in general, and yet we have no face to put to this other person on the other end. What does it do to our relationships? Are we more open with the faceless? With no fear of recognizing this other person in the real world, I can see how that might be true. Are we afraid that we will have to change our labels of people once we have a face? That they might not be the image of who we imagined them to be? I don’t know.

And then I wondered if you wondered what I looked like too.. So, silly me, I posted a few pics on the web for your viewing pleasure. I’m making this a friends’ only entry, hopefully to keep out the weirdo stalkers… Both of the pics are now a few years old. I have a bad habit of never finishing a roll of film. I wear contacts more now and less makeup…

Julia
— My best friend was getting married, and I was feeling left out (yeah, the whole thing was hard on me) so the two of us went out and took “pseudo-engagement” photos of the two of us. to celebrate the event and our friendship. Blame the fuzzy pic on her fiancé.. he took them

Jules
— Um, yeah. Not the most flattering pic of me, but it’s not like this is a dating thing or anything. It makes me laugh.

And if any of you are brave or willing, I’d love to see what you look like too… You can send pics directly to me at jcd1013@dsdf.org. I promise I won’t use them as blackmail. 🙂

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.