Talk to yourself out loud in public.

think of my motherly connection with C. She's got rings on her fingers and bells on her toes; hey has anybody seen my sweet gypsy rose? Don't know simon. *recalls various exotic weathar like drizzly lit mists in willows though cold black stars*
Freedom from obligation of outside involvement is different than having the option removed. *recalls roommate speaking on book of how soviet prisoners became spiritually freeer the more they were constrained.* The really big things are reserved for times of need, but smaller versions at home are done for educational/training purposes. I did telekenesis because C did it first, and figured why not. If I were to do it in the public eye, I'd have to have a pretty important reason. Hmm.. come to think of it, I already do it, guiding the trajectories of cars that have skidded out of control, but that's not exactly done by telekinetic methods, nor is anyone likely to realise what graces were involved.

Sweet Gypsy Rose. Sounds like a film, or a poem. Or one of those Victorian comic novels. You don't want to know Simon Armitage. He's rubbish. I had to study his poems for my GCSE English exams. We went to see him read them at the Octagon in town and he had the most boring voice. Not like Sujata Bhatt. Her voice was beautiful, mourful, grey, but beautiful. I posted one of her poems here at SC when I was talking to Cleo.

Hum, distracted today. The curtains flapping in the corner of my eye. I've been concentrating too much recently! One exam to go. I spent this afternoon at the Peace gardens in town with friends. The fountain was working today and even though it's in teh city centre and the gardens are only very small (more like a lowered square) it was beautiful.

Maybe I've learnt to avoid totally. Perhaps that's what I got from all the butt-holes out there. I don't believe communism puts less strain on the planet. On the contrary, because people rarely owned any realty, the land was treated as a communal resource. Some of the worst pollution on the face of the Earth has occurred in the former Soviet Union and China. Private ownership of land means people are able to claim damages if nuisance or negligence by neighbours results in polution of a persons' land. In China right now there are no environmental impact assessments. Communism has left an environmental nightmare in Russia. It's nice in theory, but if no one owns any land, no one really gives a crap if pollution is out of control. Even in British based common law a person has to prove pollution has reduced a persons enjoyment of their land. Non-property holders must prove pollution has caused actually personal injury. Communism in the USSR ended the corruption of the elite and replaced a system that was totally inadequate, but it never managed to make the lives of the people as easy as those in our countries and western Europe. Remember people lining up for toilet paper all day? Capitalism would be working right now if the Russians cleaned up the crime. No system can work if there are no standards where all people are accountable under the law.

It was from a pop song in the 70's. not thinking of much except islam stuff on radio, and virus which was actually tech links. weirdness.

I'm happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy Done diddly done done. Finished. Hooray. Hoorah. Halle......um halleloo......er? Not sure how to spell that. I don't care because I'm the happiest person on Earth right now! Well, maybe not but I'm close

Yay

I'm singing this morning. Tralalalala! I look like I've gone mad probably and I don't care. It's a beautiful day, light breeze hiding the warmth - it'll be baking later. The sky'd pretty cloudy (almost 100% cover) but it'll lift in an hour or two.

Oh, should I be on the other survey now?

I'm singing this morning. Tralalalala! I look like I've gone mad probably and I don't care. It's a beautiful day, light breeze hiding the warmth - it'll be baking later. The sky's pretty cloudy (almost 100% cover) but it'll lift in an hour or two.

Oh, should I be on the other survey now?

Hang on a sec? I'm not supposed to be able to do that am I? Say the same thing twice......Weird.

one says sky'd, the other says sky's.

Ah, that explains it!

tralalala = [undisclosed thought]
Glad to hear you've gone mad. You deserve it. Yes, you're supposed to be in the other survey now {if no one hammers on me for issuing commands}. Baking? I get the idea that's 85° for you (30C°?). I went to a scientific antiquities museum today and got souvenir viewmasters of stereographic flower x-rays. Duplicate comments is what you get for thinking of duplicate survey responses (minor mind over matter).

There's a site on the internet with x-ray flowers - I remember seeing it a couple of years ago.

30 degrees C - that's pretty hot, yes. I'm not sure if it was that hot the other day. My dad taught me how to do the degrees symbol but nope notthat eitherI don't remeber how - hold down shift and type a code on the number pad? Or is it Ctrl? Not ctrl, that didn't do anything. Try shift: What on earth? I just typed something and it woulnd up in the middle of all that stuff up there???

There's sport on every tv channel. My brother came in just to tell me that. I checked and he's right. Four channels and sport on every one!

Hold own alt - type a number from 0 to 255 - then release alt. all you things like éë¥ are there (usually around 130-150), I have a chart but often just take a whole bunch of guesses and erase all the characters that didn't do it. I once tutored a swedish exchange student on computer usage, and she was most happy to have found a swedish character that allowed her to find her home towns online newspaper.
Oh, that was this survey, I should have commented on how I wanted to sleep her, the fance Beverwil home she was staying in with the sculptures by the pool, and thoughts of our long hike (with a couple folks from my workgroup yesterday) and my long fast bike tour getting there up insane hills on no sleep or breakfast. I have a blisters all over my feet and a sunburn.It's rare I ever close my shades, but I need to feel shaded. I took stereo photos of the rock formations, but it turns out one of my cameras wasn't set at the right film speed. Oh wait, I did all the exposures manually, so that doesn't matter, yay. glad i went through my thought.

:)¬`` person smoking pipe

I'm down to hand rolling this very moment. Does steam make you think of pipe smoking?

}Yay`-{ÌoM++Üþx+¬µÎÝ++¡Ò
Got a bit distracted there.éâäàåçêëèïîìÄÅÉæÆôöòûùÿÖÜø£Ø׃áíóúñѪº¿Wait. Aha! It was º Alt 167. Gotcha!!!!

Slightly tangented thought. Tangented isn't a word Claire. I just addressed myslef as Claire, not a good sign. Like those people who say Now then Claire (when that's there name, I mean their name).

My mum has blisters and sunburn. Well, she's pink, not quite sunburn. I'm pink too. I sat out in the Peace Gardens after my last exam. Not wise, I should have used sun cream......

Besides being sort of cute (tangented makes sense to me), stratifying ones consciousness could allow greater discernment within a realm. On the other hand I know too many people who's spiritual perception and communication does not intersect with their physical realm. One has to make a quantum leap to talk with them on spiritual matters. I think people should act as doors or bridges between realms and work on turning our physical plane into a spiritual one.
Not all fonts handle all of these characters. Sigma, for instance doesn't seem to exist in Comic Sans. I'd much rather be calling you claire here. I'm usually sharing many more experiences (like sunburns) with people I'm giving attention to. You are a 'Claire', that's why I'm compelled to hand you wisdom with every comment.

Nope. Steam doesn't make me think of pipe smoking. Why did you ask?

I'm not understanding all this. I'm getting some of it though. That's better than nothing.

Quantum Leap was a great show. My brother's here. He took food and went. I thought he was in bed. It seems not.

I have music in my head. I've been playing a computer game with repetitive background music - it hasn't even got a proper tune. I was playing it for, well, a few hours (does that make me look a bit sad?) and now I can still hear the music. I'd better be back to normal by the morning. Oh, it is the morning. Nearly 1am. i wonder if Sara replied yet. Some girl on the revision website - she's up too. She has a place at Cambridge - worritting about it.

Claire wasn't my idea here. It got let slip one day and I've been that here to a lot of people since. But it fits here as well as anywhere else. As though the me here and the me away from here have drawn together - we're the same person now. To start with, we were different. Two sides of the same coin, but different sides all the same. What kind of metaphor was that? That was a "it's 1 in the morning metaphor!"

Wisdom. I used to dream about knowledge. I'd wonder what it would be like to know everything. I mentioned it to some friends the other day. The girl from a long way down south (a *long, long way*) turned her nose up at it - she didn't get what I meant. I don't like her. A long way down south - makes her sound like she's from Hell. I may not like her much but that's not what I meant. I'm jealous. Oh, did I type that? I'm not like that, not before - just her. I don't think that I'd like her anyway, she doesn't like me I don't think. Mutual then Oh, it's not even dislike as much as a desire not to like. Makes no sense. Doesn't to me anyway

I was wondering if you were thinking about steam yet. *pulls out a toy octopus to remind me of insects (and bring insect tales into my life)*

It's hard to immerse in steam the way you can with insects. I'll try though. There's a song called 'steam' isn't there?

Thinks of 'sliders', 'star-gate', 'seven days', and such shows, trying to recall which ones served more as diaries or metaphysical lessons. I'm not entirely sure I've even seen quantum leap. Repetitive music, might as well be this reggae I'm listening too. little of what you are saying makes sense. you need to sleep. You were jealous of this gal you didn't like? I always wanted to be omniscient. It was in the back of my head in an abstract fashion, and only became concrete in thoughts of studying as much as i could, or reading fiction like moorcocks tale of making a bi-gendered person with an organic computer that synthesized all the worlds specialists knowledge. Omniscience means something different to me now. God has so many ways of passing on knowledge, and omniscience means different things co-creating or living in the 'now', surrounded by existentialism, etc.

Three great shows. Well, sliders slid off the good scale and 7 days was cheesily good rather than actually good. Stargate's great though. Suzi (from school) likes Carter. Don't see it myself.

That music's out of my head now. After another stint playing teh game it'll probably be back though. My mum bought cherries today - big ones that are coloured like peaches. They're atrter than the dark red ones. I've never seen proper cherries except in pictures. Madness. I want to try one. My mum says she'll buy some if she ever sees them.

I'm not sure if I ever make sense. Good sense that is. I got plenty of sleep

She's just some girl. I got pangs of it but nothing major. Everything seems major at 1 in the morning!!!

I just this moment - as I was submitting that - got an email from her! Weird

My music is birds singing at the moment. I brighten up saying things like 'angel birds' to myself. Oh yeah, I've seen those cherries around a lot. *recalls having to eat pounds of bing cherries at the canadian border because we couldn't take them through* My cooking gets really exotic when I put off shopping so long. Last night I used a kefir sourcream dressing hat had turned into some sort of bleu-cheese yogurt with an old can of salmon, it actually turned out quite well (with lemon-bellpepper sauce, habonero salsa, and a thai sauce). On my hike saturday i made a friend into a kumquat fan. My mom didn't care for bellpeppers until I introduced her to the sweet red ones.
I'm trying to introduce joalis to these synchronicity issues. I suspect it's hopeless.

Catherine, Called Birdy. A book about a medieval lady. But not a very rich one - she has to spend a lot of her time sewing linen for beds and things. And she's only young - 13 or 14? She keeps birds in cages in her room because she likes their songs.

I don't even know what kefir sourcream is Sounds interesting though. Some interesting combinations. I like nice solid food when I cook. Broths and breads. Hearty and warming. Fancy, my cooking isn't. Sounded a bit Yoda-like there.......

We were looking at kumquats in the fruit shop (the hippy shop) the other day. I don't know exactly what they are, A cross between two other fruits I thought but I don't know which ones or even if that's right.

This is a *really* ugly tablecloth. I say that a lot.........

What are bellpeppers? Cleo sent me some bell-shaped tomatoes but I can't plant them until next year. They look really nice though.

Love yoda refernces. kefir is a goat milk yogurt beverage. this prepackaged dressing of mine cultured further into something eles, but i took a chance on it. I have an iron constitution / immune system. I dont think kumquats are a hybrid, but they have sweet skins (you eat them whole) and innards tasting a bit like grapefruit. Bellpeppers are a large chili pepper, but not hot like everything else in the pepper family. They are almost as large as a couple apples. The green ones taste a bit like a sweet onion, radish, or cucumber. The red ones are more sweet without the tint of bitterness. We use them a lot in salads and nachos here. If I have one vegetable in the fridge, it's bellpeppers. They are also a big ingredient in Thai cooking. Bellpepper, pineapple, onion, and mango (often together) are my main cooking fruits/veggies. Throw in some coconut, shrimp, nuts, and curry powder in a broth to serve on rice and you have a good thai curry dish. my favorite.

I want to go and see Star Wars. I'm supposed to take my mum but my friends want to see it too. There's Spiderman as well, it only came out about a week ago. maybe. i wsn't paying much attention. Mind on other matters. No more

Ah, kefir suddenly sounds a tad unpleasant. In Russia and Poland they drink yoghurt that's been left out in the sun for a few days. It's a great delicacy apparently. My Russian teacher taught me the word for it so that I could avoid it if I ever went. I've forgotten it though. I want to carry on learning though at university. I hope I have time for other stuff as well as my subject. Biology

Your yoghurt/cheese/mould sounds a lot like the things I used to find under my bed when I tidied my room. I was forever making potions or imaginary food using real ingredients

I should try a kumquat sometime. I would never have tried to eat their skin. Is it bitter? I'll buy a couple tomorrow if they aren't extortionate. Oh, you said that the skins were sweet. I like sweet fruit. I had melon today. And fresh squeezed oragne juice. That woman in the cafe. Anorexic? Maybe buleimic. That's not the way to spell it. Kept getting the cream on her hot chocolate topped up and just eating that. Then going and asking for more. It was quite distressing really but I couldn't stop watching.

I've never had chili peppers in anything. Certainly, no-one in my family has ever coked with them. I don't like hot food. Spicy hot not heat hot. I like heated hot food. Oh, bellpeppers aren't as hot. Maybe they'd be a good place to start.

My stomach hurts. Must have eaten too much melon. I have to go shoe shopping tomorrow. It's pretty much my least favourite thing to do. I went today but didn't get anything so I have to try again tomorrow. Oh, today. It's gone 12.

I don't eat curry. I never liked it much when I had it before. My mum and dad like it a lot but I have seperate meals anyway so it's not that hard.

The boys are talking very loudly. Mum and dad are in bed, they'll wake them up. Boys *sigh* I hope I did what I was supposed to with dad's phone. He'll be peeved if work are trying to call him out and can't get through because I'm on the net. I should probably come off. I need to get some slepp anyway. It got darker in here. Did it? Batty. Dying. It's getting darker. But he got the bus home. Or is that another story. You'll be okay laddie. You must be wondering what I'm talking about My mind wandered onto Biggles books. Oh, Chris closed the door, that's why it got dark Not devilish dark at all......

*laughing about food under bed* My bro had lots of that stuff too. Bulimia does sound distressing. Hmm.. good thing we don't share meals. I love super spicy hot.
You are definitely prime for a mystical existence.

There's probably lots of horrid stuff lurking under my bed right now. I have to clear my room out before I go to university. My mum wants to use it as a study during my term time. I suppose that'll stop it from going rank while I'm gone. There's a half built Babylon 5 under my bed. Lots of school stuff. Dust. Loads of dust. Bits and pieces of artwork, probably ruined by now. Mould and mildew (damp walls). And spiders. Lots of the little beggars. I knocked a pot of buttons over today. Phobias, who needs them.

Prime for a mystical existence? Not sure that I want one. Maybe that's the main limitation. Like being a good doctor. Technically, I'd make a great doctor, but it's not what I *want* to do so I wouldn't be any good at it at all. Self-fulfilling prophecy. Sociology exam. My synoptic paper, I wrote about labelling theory and self-fulfilling prophecy. Not my best essay! But what is?

Excellent topic for a paper. I suppose there's little data on the things that are obvioous to some and BS to others. Half-built Babylon 5? Are you breeding a space port from unfinished meals and mutant spiders? Is there a superstition about knocking over buttons? What sort of artwork?

The space port might be more fun It's a plastic model I got for my birthday the year before last. I started making it but I just ran out of steam. I'll have to dig it out as a summer project. I got it cheap because some of the plastic was melted. I moulded it so that it wouldn't be open to the vacuum of space using modeller's putty. I even started painting the bits - it was going quite well.

I have a phobia of buttons They make me feel sick.

Bad artwork mostly. I did art at GCSE (age 15-16) and we had to complete various projects. The stuff under my bed is the tatty stuff. The best bits are in my art folder in the attic. I was best at drawing but not so good at anything else. I always liked playing with materials - clay and paint. I loved the thick paints - the oils and acrylics best because I could make my pictures textured. I haven't done any artwork in a long time though. At least, I've worked on the lierary side rather than anything else. I still (try to) write poetry (bad, bad, bad). I used to act, and paint and draw and prance around. I still do in my head

My pictures never really meant anything. They just were. None of that representation stuff. I had to draw a naked man at one point. Life drawing. I had a swollen arm from my Meningitis vaccine and it really hurt. Then the man kept tring to look me in the eye. We all avoided his genitals. Drew them in last - so when we put our work on the wall there were all these pictures of a man with a blank space in the middle. My last picture was the best, except his bits kept moving. I liked to get it right. Probably why I liked sketching over painting or prints - more control.

I'd hate my life if it was all controlled yet I seek it out. I don't know why.

...like I am waiting for next Harry Potter book to come out...

Ah this survey.. , very well then, wonders if you had a bad experience involving buttons. You're a tactile person.. clay, thick paints, like mud oozing between your toes. I keep wanting to do some art. Haven't done so in months, maybe years, though I carved a dragonfly in the handle of a knife last night for my daughters b-day. I keep adding to her package, now more than half a month late, and now it's too late to send it in time for my son's b-day whom I haven't got something for yet. Back to a potential 'buttons' issue. Perhaps his bits were best suited for animation, or at least dynamist cubism.

You would think, at least during the reading, that you're immersed in the current book. It could be a spell though. Maybe the author was busy thinking of the next book too while writing this one.

I don't remember any bad button experiences. Curtains billowing. I've tried really hard but I don't remember anything. It may be inherited - my mum has it too but she can touch them. She has a bad button memeory but she thinks that she had the phobia before that. I remember being chased around my grandma's garden by my mum. My grandma had bought me a duffel coat from a jumble sale. It was lovely and looked really warm but it had those duffel coat buttons. I was probably 2 or 3 and I refused to wear it. We raced round and round but she didn't catch me. She must have been pregnant at the time with my little brother - seems like the right time. I know I had to wear it after that though.

Ah the mud. I used to pull muddy clay off the beach on the East coast and mould it into things. Very, very dirty muddy clay. It doesn't wash of very easily. The flats are studded with ancient bits of wood. Like Seahenge.

I wonder if they get disappointed to get late presents. Depends how young they are I suppose. There's a point where reason wins through. Things can be explained. I remember the time before. Tantrums in teh street. Oh dear! The Ribena. My mum got cross with me and threw it away because I wouldn't drink it and I couldn't explain to her that I wanted to save it for later. Kids whine vague words when they can't express what they feel. All too easy for a parent to snap. To smack. It's abuse.

She's too young for him. A couple across the street. She's younger than me - maybe 15? He's as old as my dad. I don't object to age gaps but there must be something wrong with a guy that thinks it's okay to sleep witha girl that age. How do I know that they're sleeping together. You can tell...........

At the idea of animation. I created animations on our old Amiga - there was a paint programme, began with a D and you could do animations on it. Mine were about a stickman and I called him Willy. No euphemism inyended but my brother was that little bit older and used to get giggles every time I mentioned him. Worst was the time that Willy fell into a big hole and couldn't get out. How my brother laughed. I thought that my animation was just really funny Do boys ever grow up?

Huh, an inherited fear of buttons. I can believe that. Perhaps great-grandma has an explanation. Maybe you can create a cool ghost story out of it. I once stayed in a desolate area of the north california coast. I went hiking a couple hours up creek and was drawn to search for stones in the creek at one place. I ended up digging up a rectangular cube of cerulean or jade that measured 10" square by 18". I set it on the bank, and when I returned for it a few hours later it was gone. I still have a smaller stone in the shape of an indian chief head from the creek though. On another hike to the beach below I discovered a wall of colorod clay oozing out of the cliff onto the beach. There were 2' of green, 2' of ash, 2' of black, and two feet of brick red. There were rocks in the waves shaped like sea-lions and such in the waves in the same colors. and then there were shards of the same rock in the hills above, as if there were some cycle of raining rocks that ooze back to the beach. I made a pipe out of it in the woodstove which I gave to a neighbor who later took up ceramics there (her and my mom used to talk on the phone).
I take it mom snapped at times. Perhaps you tried teething on buttons and your mom freaked out about it.
Oh, a neighbor. I just saw a movie on tv about jerry lee lewis marrying his 13 year old cousin. You could make friends with her and ask. It has to be interesting at least. I'm thinking I need to get C. animation software for christmas. She draws tons of comics for her website. Willy . I can imagine my son chuckling at that sort of thing to. When I was a teen I dug a pit trap on the beach which I covered with twigs, plastic wrap, and a bit of sand. I lowered my my bro and his friend into it by their ankles to make it deep. We surrounded it with a gorgeous partially finished sand castle and a pile of shells in case someone wanted to complete the castle rather than jumping on it. This was my first blatant bout of karma; turned out the twigs were poison oak, and I got an emergency hospital case from head to toe that had me tying my hands down to not scratch my bits in my sleep. [things unsaid]
Oh, i've been meaning to comment for awhile that you look somewhat like my favorite actress, Kate Winslet.

Wow, now that's a big reply! Fun stuff. Except I'm getting up in four and a half hours.........That's not natural!!!

I'm going between this and a scarily active school mailing list. Everyone else should be in bed!!! But then, they're not getting up at 5am. Mothers!!!

Why choose great grandma of all people to mention? My mum's bad experience that she remembers was of sorting through my great grandma's pot of bits and pieces and pulling a big ugly button from the bottom.

I once nearly entered a ghost story competition. I had a great idea (I thought so) about Ann Boelyn returning to haunt Henry VIII (who didn't write Greensleeves apparently). My mum said she didn't think taht was what they were after and I couldn't think of anything else so I didn't enter. A few months later, the winner was announced - he'd written a story about Ann Boelyn haunting Henry VIII.........

That's a big chunk! Sounds like an amazing beach. A bit like those bottles with different layers of coloured sand. But oozing. Love that word

All mums snap at times I think. They regret it, or at least they should, Who can forget the terror of those moments when she loses it completely and hisses words that you don't know the meaning of. When you think you're going to get smacked and you flee so you're just out of arms length every time she takes a step forward. And my mum hardly ever smacked me. It's damaging. I love her for being angry that she ever lashed out.

See, it's a boy thing. They stay young forever I think Like lollopy dogs. They need looking after.

Like a bear trap! I always wanted to do that kind of thing. I'd read about it in survivalist books and plan. My Side of the Mountain - great book. American too. A boy runs away and lives in the wilds (the Catskills I think). I must have read that book 20 or 30 times.

Is poison oak a US thing - I read about it a lot in Charlie Brown but I've never heard of people being affected like taht here. Strange herbage. Sounds nasty.

Kate Winslet. Sweet but

I hope I'm not keeping you from things you need to do like sleep. I had a half nights sleep so I don't stay up all night. I'm going rock climbing in the morning.
Just an intuitive impulse on great-grandma.
Looks like you have an inspiration for a contemporory gdhost story. Have you seen Kate Winslet in Quills? That's almost ghost story. Lollopy dogs. How cute.
Poison oak is at least a US thing. maybe just here come to think of it. It was considered as a motif for our national flag, as were snakes. It can be hard to identify because it likes to camoflage itself with existing foliage. More evil is that it's the fresh oily buds that are most toxic, not the visible leaves.I saw that mountain book as a movie. My pit caught two kids in two sorts of terror. The first leaped on the castle and just instantly vanished, the second teetered on the brink awhile before finally losing to the pit. I still helplessly chuckle with a grimace, hopefully the poison oak has karma eternally covered on that. I also did a speech in high school on how to build one. , eh?

Pah, sleep! I have a car journey that's at least 7 hours tomoorow so I can sleep then. Why waste my last night with the internet for a week by sleeping! As long as I'm in bed by the time my mum goes in to wake me up it'll be okay.

Rock climbing. It rocks? I did it once when I was younger. While we were gone, thieves broke into our minibus and stole our things.

I've heard of Quills - is that the Marquis de Sade one? But I haven't seen it. I sit worth it?

It was supposed to be a bad movie. Film. Movie. Film. Fil-um in Ireland.

You'll probably be awake all through the trip too. If you're anything like me, you have the energy to meet opportunities as they come up.
I went rock climbing when I was a young teen. We went 20 feet up a more than vertical face solely by working our fingertips up a crack. I recall hiking on a 14ooo foot summit. We were really wondering if the tuna boat we were driving would slide off the icy road down the mountain. Surprisingly, we weren't the only ones on that road. When we returned from our hike someone had broken our windshield for blocking the road, we're pretty sure. I love all winslet's movies. That one was good, but intense, full of lust and dark connections. Holy Smoke was a fun one I saw when in a conversion battle with Kaleb.

I always like to take opportunities. I was taught to and it feels like a failure to not grasp them and cling on as long as possible. I try to smile through it

I saw part of a film once where a school bus went off the road and skidded onto a frozen lake. It sank. Horrid.

How do you drive a boat on a road?

Kaleb seems to fight a lot of battles.

It was a mercury marquis, the biggest car sold in 1978. Because I intentionally didn't get enough sleep to encourage getting enough tonight, I sure hope I don't do an all-nighter like I did before last weeks hike. I was fine last week though, though I sure slept when i got back home.
I'd like to do something in the sun today, but i'm a bit too tired to get off my butt.
Yeah, he sure does.

I'm up late again. It's gone 2am but I had a long car journey today. Slept most of the way so I can't sleep now. My brother's been working all day - he's stretched out on the settee. Asleep. He might wake up in a bit and go to bed. The tv's on, I wonder if anyone's watching it? Yep, my little brother's up too. He slept in the car as well.

Devon was interesting. In the sun it was too hot. I don't like the heat. I burned my ears. And I was so careful with the suncream. But the edges of my ears are burned. And the parting in my hair. It's all flaky now like I have dandruff. Am I doing this right? Maybe I have to relearn.

ah good, i didn't even have to go instantiate a new thread here, as i planned to do upon your return. radio plays opera song by the countess about the count flirting with others. I watched a movie last night that I thought was a kate winslet, Morocco, it turned out to be an older movie w/ marlene dietrich and gary cooper. Our video store is a mess. I'm thinking to see about getting a job realphabetizing it all. my sunburn is almost entirely done peeling. I've given up on shampoo altogether, and my scalp has greatly improved. Apparently I was allergic. oh i love this radio (fireside theatre), these kids are speaking in rhyme at the prom. volleyball, now there was an ultimete regrettable flirt. So how hot was it. SC was down for a couple days and I finally got some work done on my viewmaster cataloguing project. oh, the gal he's with is mermaid. Stops to play 'blue moon'. C. needs more ocean I bet.

Nope I'm here and willing Ready to go! Raring perhaps. Like steak.

I have to type quietly (slowly) because my parents' room is right above me and apparently it keeps them awake.....For a room of my own without people to disturb, with my own key to lock myself in and my own sink. Simple things for simple minds It's what I want. Whenever I've stayed away at universities I've loved it. Having that key to lock my room. Power hungry? Maybe. I have a desire to own something. My bedroom at home feels almost like I'm being lent it. No money changed hands. My mum wants to use it to work in when I go to university. I need to clear it out quite a bit before that.

I resurrected Virgil. My computer game - Arcanum. Vast, vast game. The plot intricacies are greater than any other computer game I've played before and it depends on your character completely. I'm hooked

Where am I?

I read a review (two) about a production of Les Liasons Dangereuse by Cambridge University. I don't know why I still have those papers. Count flirting with others indeed. Valmont.

Icons. Morning tv. One of the gems. I like it it's smething always forget to watch and just occasionally stumble across. It has something. Profiles, but brief and they don't show any footage (can't afford it!) but it somehow gives quite a flash of who they were. Dietrich was done I'm sure. I like old films. Dependable. Safe. Harvey.

I don't think I've ever been in a video store. We get them from the library mostly. Not a good selection though.

My hair needs the shampoo, not sure my skin does though. Very sensitive skin. Water makes it lump and bump. Like I've been stung by nettles or midges have got at me.

You regret flirting? I flirt a lot. Doesn't seem to sit with the way I see myself. But my flirting isn't sexualised. More the kind of joky way I'd act with my younger brother. It's a fine line. I've regretted it too.

70 on the Fahrenheit scale when I was looking. I wasn't looking at the hottest time of day though. I hope my photos come out okay. Not melted like Dali's clocks.

I hate it when SC is down like that. Sometimes I feel I really need to come here. Let it out, let it out, let it out. Why do I feel like crying?

I was just thinking the other days of rooms with their own sink. I've never seen one. Raring to go eh . Recalls meeting A. at thrift store. What a sweetpowerful aura. She thought we had met before. We had, on my porch. I thought I'd met B. before too. We had, I was her astrologer/psychotherapists secretary. It's a virtual world. People have a hard time getting that. I lived with my folks for awhile. It was bleak. I never felt comfortable doing things with people there. It was always like taking my friends to visit my folks. I had problems like the late night keyboards too. Eventually I figured out that the walking on eggs level of concern creates a psychic bond that actually wakes and disturbs, rather than protects as something closer to obliviousness achieves. wonder how the game compares to my arcana workgroup. no time for games.. real life is even weirder.
I have no idea where you are. I'm sure you'll come out fine though.
Dependable and safe. never thought of it like that. they had some values society is now sorely missing. Chances are when they shoot in morocco, they shoot in morocco. I was bike camping and ran into a photographer photographing tomales bay in california. He told me by the time they were done, it would be a river in morroco, with steamships dropped in digitally and such. I like the pace of old movies, time to absorb things, not just fleeting impulses. Like that movie about the native american who becomes a media hero representing the park system back in the 30's. At a council of the chiefs, he says only 'it's an honor to be here', and after a minute the chiefs finally burst into laughter, realising he was never even a native in the first place, and tell him that the power of a man is to dream, that he has dreamed well. I'm about to break down and start using shampoo again. My scalp didn't improve, and my hairs getting oily. I've been wracking my rain for some karmic explanation, as well as looking for changes in diet and such. I once made a nettle stew. After boiling for five minutes they are tasty edibles packed with nutrition. It's sweet flirting with you overseas in a more romantic than sexual manner. I regretted last december when i slept with a gal you could say I'd been dating. It was a sort of a sexual attraction without any physical sentiment, and ended up feeling like the mating of gymnastic corpses. I'd asked for a redo of my wife, and ended up with a similar gal with the same name who coaxed my shelved male identity out of me. She was roughly #3, and now I've basically gone back to my policy of not getting physical with someone I wouldn't marry.
, I can almost get chills at 70º. It was 75 today, and 70's to 80's are expected all week. It was a bit hot for bikeriding all over town though. I'm all sticky and working up the energy for a second shower today.
I don't know why you feel like crying, but seems like something worth hanging out and talking about.

Never seen a room with it's own sink? Well! My room at the cottage we rented for our holiday had a sink. It was a nice cottage - that's why I wanted that room so much. My mum liked it too but she let me have it. They had the room downstairs instead - which suited me and my brother because we could talk late at night without worrying about waking anybody up.

It's a virtual world. No wonder people have a hard time getting that. Who wants to believe that? If it's true at all. Said like a fact, but why should it be. Could it be. Why is reality never just that? Why doubt it? Why is their no belief that something could be what it seems? Why do we want to believe in hidden things? Occult. Means hidden doesn't it? Maybe because we all hide things so we assume that any greater power would hide things too. But that presumes a greater or higher power exists - hidden frm us. If it is hidden or if it exists at all. Bah!

I do like living at home but I want to stretch my wings, feel independent. The queen of all I survey. On holiday, it was no-one's territory - there to be marked and I pounced I did the washing up and helped with jobs liek that more than I do at home. Here its my mum's domain - already claimed. I want to find my own domain. With a laptop or a PC? Hmmm. Have to weigh them up.

Old movies are often so bad in so many ways - they have that *style* of acting that seems so forced. But somehow it works. I don't understand ho wthey do it.

Wracking your rain? Lovely image there *As the rain falls, Kristal leans out of her window* "Rain, I demand that you tell me what I want to know! Tell me now, tell me at once!!!"

I'd love to try cooking with nettles. I like eating dandelion leaves, so why not nettles. I'll have to look for recipes. Nettle soup always sounds nice.

I don't feel like crying anymore. I was low yesterday. I don't know why. My friends. It had to do with them but I don't know why or how. I almost want to push them away which is foolish becaause they mean so much to me. Th eold defensive mechanism I suppose. Don't get too close. Maybe I'm afraid of losing them now we've left school. Psychoanalysis! Not for me.......

I hope we can all be happy.

Ok, I've seen kitchens, bathrooms, studio apartments, hotels, and motels with sinks.
My thoughts come true, as if I'm writing the script for what happens in my life. I've been at peaks where every second I'm aware that I'm one with the intent of every detail created. Life is nothing but mind over matter; It is the rule, not the exception. People who are aware of that can steer it better, but people are contibuting to the plot of their surroundings even if they don't believe that's possible. There are many planes of the logos, etheric and buddhic vision, etc. They are always here, but not everyone can see them. Occult is a relative term. To a psychopath, emotional content would be an occult subject, but you and I know it exists. Who wants to believe in virtual reality? People who can flow with love through nothing but objective physical and emotional beauty, living in a grace where everything is perfect beyond cause for change, have no need to know that. Chances are however that much work breaking through occult veils is a prerequisite for such a simple heaven on earthly world to manifest itself.
My nettle soup contained carrots, rice, and a fire oil made by steeping these pea sized ultra-hot habanero peppers in scotch whiskey and olive oil on the wood stove for days.
All sorts of possible complications. You are one of those kinesthetic sensitive healer types. Some cultures would have given you your own hut so you can maintain your emotional integrity. I noticed today that I was on campus averting my eyes from others. It's almost akin to fear or low energy, even if the reasoning is feeling isolated or not wanting to disturb others. I made a conscious effort (better now before the semester starts) to beam with lots of eye-contact, even if that means I might offend as many as I inspire.
Make an effort to do things with your friends. Don't simply get in the habit of just letting actiities with friends happen because of your environment, because one day you won't be in those environments. You'll have to make things happen out of grasped threads.
The radio show I'm listening to parallels what I was saying on co-creation.
On one of my planes, we all know each other in spirit. I was bicycling past some teens today and thought to myself "Sure they're attractive, but don't think about them; they're too young". A couple blocks later I passed another group of teen gals, and decided 'don't even give them a second glance'. One yelled back to me as I passed "Well, I suppose we're too small too!". Someone who wasn't aware of psychic planes wouldn't have been able to make any sense of their shout out of the blue.
I think you'll generally be a receptive person in life, but don't forget to develop being active.

Oops, missed a couple paragraphs there.
Wracking my rain, I suppose I was thinking about all those thorough scalp showers. Precipitations has been a major subject of our spiritual group lately. I prefer your vision there, a bit more etheric (and I do see various etheric rains at times.) though I don't get information from them, they're just something to observe and understand.
Old actors came from a times when they had to project their voice over an entire audience (plays). Theatre study can involve projecting consciousness to the audience, even in receptive (like in So. india) as well as active broadcasting formations. It's my goal in theatre thi coming semester to totally command atmospheric manifestation as well as connect to the entire audience on an interactive soul level. The college is putting on a new version of 'Alice in Wonderland', which I intend to get a part in.
Happy happy happy.

I have no thoughts. Just a sense of reading. I don't know why. But there are tears that I don't have any reason for. I can wipe them away and no more follow. But then I've lost the connection between what there was and their source. Sorry. But what for?

Good luck with Alice. Make yourself think. Me I mean. Make myself.

I often have a feeling like I need to cry, but no related reason. I think they call it clinical depression, but I think it can be traced down to things that were unresolved or unacknowledged hours or days earlier. Though it usually hits me if I get tired. I ended up pouring tears over the sacrifice of some wood-fairy spirits to the chainsaw for furniture purchases after staying up 5 or six days. Why think? It often gets in my way of sensible behavior.

Since it's this survey, I should throw in that I'm also thinking about writing a letter to NThenSome about how our conversations expanded in my surroundings, esp the music, horus, and waterfall stuff, printing a manual for a calculator I bought at the thrift store to map out my proof of Fermats last theorm (today is a celebration of the seer Damo, daughter of Pythagoras), 3D camera stuff, astrology and spiritual matters, Dabs home concerns, my kids, etc. For a foggy awakening today, I guess I sure have a lot on my mind.

With me it's called hormones I like calculators but I'm not sure if I can explain why. Perhaps because I've used them in school for so many years now. I got my first scientific calculator when I was about 12 or 13 - so complicated. I've never used most of the buttons on it. I had that one right through secondary school and for quite a while at sixth-form but then I lost it. A shame - someone had written my nickname on the back over some tip-ex for me But I got a new one - a really, really, really thin one. But putting the cover back on presses the buttons which can be irritating. I christen them by typing Biggles into the memory........

A 3D camera? Sounds pretty clever. A bit like those film cameras where they place them all around something so that the impresion of moving around a frozen image can be achieved - Matrix style.

5376618 <--like that?

btw We got a movie called '8 legged freaks' - does that satisfy your meditation on helpful garden inects?
I was ablet ot get plenty of stuff on clocks and steam and such (the things i recommended to you, but just a few radio stories on gardening insects). My conclusion is that the experiment only works when it intersects life lessons meant for a persons path. Me and NThensome had several stories manifesting. I demonstrated my guitar technique by turning the radio on to whatever came up 'hot-town. summer in the city' that night the same song came out on a casino commercial I was seeing nightly. The ad also contained a creature I had just seen in meditation.

I tried to think of steam a lot at first, but then I totally forgot about it. I really haven't been thinking about garden insects, either. I have had an unusually high number of coincidences happen the past couple of weeks, though.

I'd love to get my hands on a nice slide rule calculator like I used in 7th grade. They used to have plastic ones at any drug-store or supermarket. I did get my Fermat theorm into the machine last night. Thoughts around commercial about tangerine bridesmaid dresses loosely related to aloha festival (oh, right, need to post photes, and other thought.) and funny, the first thing I entered into my calculator was 'kristal'. I finally figured out last night how to make a wind-up hourglass while in meditation about astronomy and pyramid geometry. It's quite simple: a wheel of two or more chambers that all pour into eachother with a chain and weight on the axle. As one chamber gradually emptys into the next, the leverage diminishes enough to allow more counterbalanced rotation. My calculator was owned by a Melanie. $8. not bad when they sell new for $120.
My camera. I just put two 35mm camears together using a little piece of bolt in the tripod mount holes, and I snap both shutters at once. There are plenty of commercial stereo cameras though. That system you mention is used for lenticular prints, like old baseball cards with a record groove like surface that are either 3d-stereo or animated.

There was a time in my life when it was like a constant deja-vu. I could track down any event to something I'd just been thinking of. My answer was to be so busy thinking of new things that I didn't have time to get bored with any repetiton. What sort of coincidences.

That's it

See, slide rules are as unimaginable to me as log tables!

Tangerine? Is that a nice colour? I suppose it could be, but you'd need the right material to go with it. That shimmery stuff that bridesmaids' dresses are usually made from would look horrid in that colour. Something matte though........

How do you enter 'kristal' - what's the k and the r?

I'd love an hourglass like that! There's something soothing about hourglasses

That's a clever camera system! I once set up two identical camera sticks and photographed them so that I could produce a magic-eye type efect when I looked at them right. Those kind of things aren't really magic-eyes though - what are they called, stereo-somethings....

My calculator supports alpha characters. Oh duh, joalis must be writing upside down. Oh yea, 'biggles', how cool. Pearl shimmer, like a frosty tangerine shurbut. I've fallen in love with the color lately, and got a couple blouses in it. The gal I was just mentioning at the antique store used to wear it a lot. It takes a dynamic fearless person to pull it off. But it looks fantastic when they do. Magic eye? SIDS? (single image dot stereograms). I'm not sure what you're describing.. camera sticks? tripods? The basic mechanism of 3d photos is that one eye is looking at a vision produced from a left eye perspective, the right eye is looking at an image produced from a right eye perspective, and the brain interpolates that confluence into a 3d conception. Some people have trouble with it because although one uses parallax as if the images were far out in 3d space, the corneas still have to focus for images a few inches from the eyes. All stereo-photography: red-blue comics, polarised twin movie projectors, sids, viewmasters, keystone cards.. use that same concept.

Frosty tangerine. That sounds more interesting. Like roses that colour frosted with sugar for cake decorating.

Magic-eyes are those pictures that just look like a computer-generated pattern but when you stare at them right (look through them) a 3D image appears. They were all the rage a few years ago.

I think I may need a camera tripod. My hands shake. I'll wait and see how my latest batch turn out - I hope they aren't all blurry. I tore up most of the last ones I took - they were just so bad.

Yep, magic-eyes are a brand name of SIDS. I came up with a full color, full-depth, wide pictorial variant, but just proving the concept with computer graphics tools was tough work. I'd have to write complex software to do nice renditions.

Sids. Funny name. It should belong to a cartoon character. Sid. Sidney. There was a Sidney (or Sydney) in the film about the US President with Michael Douglas. Sidney Wade and a woman called Wade was in Sliders. Slide rules.......

We moved into this place a couple of years ago, and there was already a whole bunch of stuff in here. We had a carpet shampooer in a closet, that no one ever used. I was going to put it on the charity pile a couple of weeks ago, but decided not to in case my dad or uncle wanted to borrow it. A couple of days after they came and picked up our stuff, my uncle called to borrow the shampooer.

That's two shows about the us pres mentioned lately. Yep, sliders was cool. My life resembles that at times. I'm a zombie. Hmm, should i stregthen my vision of horus for an appearance at tonights festival? I should make calls and water the yard. I haven't been out of the house lately. I'm going to have to give my self a few extra minutes to ride to the meditation tonight.

Hmm. I was thinking about carpet shampooers the other day. Don't know how I'd manage it though. I'd have to do a third of my room at a time I guess. Yeah, usually when i get a hunch that someone will want something, I'm right. Sometimes I'd even bring something weird to class like a hole punch or the final from another class I had last year, and someone will be asking around to borrow such a thing.

Here's a weird one. I was driving down the road singing '...good luck seems to follow me around, won't you come and follow me too...' and this guy on a bike rode out in front of me. I hit my brakes as he swerved out of the way. Not a major thing, just kind of amusing because of the song I was singing. Good luck following him?

Fool, ho should have been following you. Maybe you're on a plane of the absurd. I can recall for my first couple years after my awakening, I could count on whatever anyone said, especially the weatharman, turning out to be it's opposite. That was when i turned away from mundane reality for other planes before reintegrating them.
It was good luck you hit your brakes.

Hope you don't think I have a President fixation!

You're a zombie? As in an undead corpse walking around half-decomposed. I'm guessing not......

Why Horus? Was he the one with the head of, um, some kind of bird of prey? A hawk perhaps? I used to know a lot about the Egyptian gods - I devoured archaeology books and Egyptology was my top choice.

Water the yard. Hmmmm. The yard must just be the garden then? When I think of yards I think of an area of concrete by a house or school. Concrete doesn't sprut when you water it. Unfortunately.

Falcon, eye, and perhaps the sphinx. Yep, the 'yard' here is whatever surrounds one's property. In our fortunate case, most of it is garden (though just barely) (the trees are healthy at least). We say 'mow the lawn', but 'rake the yard'. Some of our yard is concrete. That often gets called a 'courtyard' or 'patio' here. 'Patio's also refer to the surface of large porches.
I was a zombie because I was tired, in a state where I might write a sentence every few minutes and not notice how out of it I was. I heard a song the other day by the kingston trio about having zombie wives.

I know the zombie feeling. I'm about halfway there myself right now. I went to the pictures today to see Minority Report (I didn't like it.....) I wonder why sitting in a room staring at something makes me so tired. It's like being a passenger on a long car journey - exhausts me.

My friend the half zombie. I ended up sleeping all through the day. Maybe I'll make it to the beach early in the morning. I got myself some discipline, 2 hours of these sorts of projects, 2 hours of those sorts of projects, next think ya know I'm taking a quick diversion to write to a talk show host, and end up spending 6 unscheduled hours. Most of my days are nothing but those unintended distractions. I let them slide though, because for all I know, they are more important to my objectives (like being a talk show host) than the activities I had planned. I doubt many people reach their destinations in such scattered fashion though. I do surprise myself, occasionally reching some of my objectives almost by accident. I didn't care for the minority report billboard. Hmm.. I can't even recall if any movies are on my wish list, none important I guess. I got to make money and start dating someone, maybe T, again. (so i've said for months (years?)) I look forward to school starting again, photo and theater. It's occurred to me that not only did I wake up near sunset, that some loneliness accompanied it. School will end that. Staring at something, meaning the computer? Another sign you are a physical person. I was sorting rocks in the garden (all the white rocks found in the dirt now go on the other side of the brick path). I didn't have patience for more than a minute of it. What it took was thought. Constantly refining my rock collecting algorithm, or using it as inspiration for fantasy thoughts. I think I shut down if my minds not highly engaged. Watch out for that carbon monoxide.

I heard it's coming out in June, 2003. I cannot wait. But I have the VHS of the first movie to keep me busy, and the second movie is coming out pretty soon.

It's been a while since I was here - a few days I think. I've only been on SC for short periods of time recently and I haven't dared hit "replies" in case there was more than I could handle. I'm here now - I have the afternoon pretty free. No more ironing! I *hate* ironing. Did it for the first time yesterday. Ended up burning my fingers and toes. I'm sure that's not supposed to happen!

I wonder if we all seem like half-zombies to you? If most other people seem to be walking around in a state of sleep most (if not all) of the time. Josh mentioned that once - watching people in the street walking around in their own little worlds while he was in the actual one. I wonder if I've withdrawn into my own world? Most of the time probably. It's hard to experience the world without the commentary of thoughts to accompany it, and then they pull me back into my own head.

I've never quite managed to sleep all day I think 1pm is the latest I've ever managed. Maybe if I'd not slept for a while.

My mum was at the beach yesterday. She said she'd had an ice cream. She called while I was doing the ironing and I spent more time checking that I was doing it right than asking her how her day had been. I'll talk to her properly when she calls today. I wonder if I should miss her more. She'll be back soon

Distractions are probably worth following through. If they are able to distract us, then they're probably worthy of attention. Just not when you have a deadline I suppose. I wonder if all people crave structure of some form? I know that I do. In that survey about tyranny v anarchy - the main reason given by the people who chose tyranny was that some form of structure was maintained. That was my reason too. But I wasn't comfortable with it, and I didn't like the thought that I'd chosen tyranny, but that was how I felt. There's freedom whatever your circumstances - you can be as free under tyranny as you can under anarchy. Or so I like to think. What if it isn't a state of mind at all?

There's a few films at the moment I want to see. Minority Report was the first one I'd seen since Harry Potter at Christmas. I wanted to see Ice Age just because of the wonderful trailer with the squirrel which made everyone in the cinema laugh with delight. And I want to see MIB II and I haven't been to see Star Wars yet. But I'm not really expecting any of them to be good films - just things I wouldn't mind seeing.

You actually want to be a talk-show host? It would be interesting to see. I had a flash in my mind of you hosting a talk show just then - and at the same moment, there was just a roll of thunder. It was just a flash but there was a trashy set and a trashy audience then you sat in the middle making your trashy audience think beyond the trashiness without letting them even know that you were doing it. I always see you as a an educator

School's been my way of beating loneliness for the last few years - before that, it was the place where I was most alone. It has to be different now.

What does being a physical person mean? I feel instinctively that it's right, but without really understanding why.

Sometimes, the only way that I can do repetitive tasks is to make them into something more interesting. When I had to tidy my room, I'd be a servant, forced to work cleaning other people's rooms. It made it more interesting to look at my things as somebody else would. I don't remember doing that for a while though. I've been in revision mode for a while - it doesn't combine well with thinking. Whenever I have to revise long-term, I get filled with a desire to do something creative like paint - not do anything really, just slosh some colour around and mix it up.

Carbon monoxide? Ah I wondered about my phrasing when I wrote that. The window I'm sat by overlooks a main road. It's pretty quiet though - it's a village main road and most traffic going to the city goes along a different one. The smell of exhausts is quite faint. A few weeks ago it would have been undetectable because of the smell of manure. Strange, I like the smell of manure - country girl

Well, my discipline lasted all of 6 hours. ooh long comment. spots carbon monoxide & relates to my exhaustion. wonders why NSome is always so hard to reach. recalls gorgeous gal i met today. No, folks don't seem like zombies to me, even if they live in the purely mundane. I suck at ironing, I only do it at moms for fancy dinners. Sleeping all day involves staying up all night, using the sunrise as your indication that you've really stayed up too late. ah yes, haven't called mom in at least a month. I don't care for structure much, I draft structures in an attempt to make my life more productive, but it never works; most of my productivity occurs during incidental whims; I just seem to sit there when I've forced my agenda upon myself. It's days when I planned to go to the beach that I get some work done, and vice versa. Otherwise I seem to drag my feet in confusion and accomplish nothing.
Oh, your description of me as a talk show host is so right on. I planned in my upcoming theater class to see if I can incorporate things liked summoned thunder. Shows really depend on continuity and context. One of my favorite teachers on the radio was Alan Watts. His son has edited the works into something of a sound-byte format with drumming between passages. It's created an entirely differnt vibe, quite missing the point, in which it seems Alan is talking of things based on physical mechanics, where if one had been in tune with an entire lecture, they would feel that those earthly circumstances were the visible penetration of much greater forces one can only speak of subjectively and metaphorically. Objective concrete laws were originally what Alan resorted too in explanations, not at all the foundation for what he was teaching. It being his son, I presume that it is a case of not fully understanding the material rather than intentionally steering people astray.
Ohh, my chance to play with a servant girl. Actually I step into my home as if I were someone else too, because otherwise I don't even think anything of bras hanging on the knobs of cabinets or research clutter. I get that same impulse to paint or something creative when I get into revision mode, but then tending to practical priorities of house maintenace always exhausts that creative energy. I like the smell of skunks; manure varies, some is pleasant, some is piercingly wretched. I guess I'm fonder of smells closer to quagmires full of reeds and dragonflies and loamy decay.

6 hours is better than no hours

A gorgeous gal, eh? Interesting jump from NThenSome to her! Don't mind me - I'm sleep deprived. Zombified. I attempted 2 hours sleep on a friend's floor last night (for "last night", read "from about 5am") but it didn't work out too well. It's 2:30pm now - give me about 3 more hours and I'll be dropping off.

I hung some washing out to dry today so it looks like there's more ironing to come. I need to learn for when I leave home and don't have a mother to look after me any more!!!

My friend walked into a 24hr shop last night (at about 3am) carrying a glass and managed to persuade one of the assistants to get her a drink of water for free. They must get bored at that time of night! The sun was rising by about 3am - the sky was just beginning to turn orange. Only slightly though.

I need structure. Plans. Safety nets. maybe I'm just a scaredy cat I feel freer when I have boundaries and limits. But then again, when i don't have anything specific to achieve, I love to have unstructured time to just do whatever I fancy. Summer holidays were made for that!

Summoned thunder - we always made do with metal trays to wobble. We used them when we did Julius Caesar. One of the Brutus's went professional - he was in Band of Brothers I'm told and I've seen him in a few other things. But I haven't seen him play anything as well as he did Brutus. He should be on stage, not cooped up on camera.

Misrepresentation. Remembered not for what you said or did, but for the way others interpreted what you said or did. It hardly seems fair. I watched The Life of Brian last night - similar strand.

Loamy decay. I love the way that sounds. Loamy decay, loamy decay, loamy decay. Oh no! That reminds me - I haven't done anything with the wood I fished out of the sea yet - it'll be all dried up. I wanted to keep it - beautiful bronze age tree.....

I've never smelled a skunk. I thought they were supposed to reek something awful? I've never even seen a skunk!

guess i could read that other comment. I just woke up. I seem to wake up this late no matter when I fall asleep. I should do laundry today too. My life is solid unstructured time except an occasional appointment. Listen my friends, and be silent that you may the better hear. We had a choice in 10 grade english to recite Ceasar or Brutus from memory. I thought Brutus was the more intelligent even if his speech was longer.
Bronze age tree? My house is full of driftwood. Skunks smell like the high-note in a danish beer. I wouldn't want to get too close either, they're ok walking past or where they once wreaked havoc, but I suspect a direct blast would be quite unacceptable. Never seen one? Do they exist there? We even have some in town, opossums too.

I'm waking up too. I wasn't exactly asleep, just in that state where everything's a bit blurry.

Listen my friends, and be silent that you may the better hear. That's such a clear line, sharp.

There's a bronze-age forest off the East coast, preserved by mud-flats and the sea. I saw some of the trees a week or so ago and I collected some of the bits of wood that had broken off (I didn't pull any bits off even though a particular piece of bark was very tempting). I brought them home with me, wrapped in wet tissue so they wouldn't dry out but now I don't know what to do with them. They may have dried out already, I should check.

I've not smelled Danish beer either I'm not sure if I can even recall the smell of beer generally. On the breath of men on the bus, my dad sometimes, but less nowadays.

There aren't any skunks here, but I don't remember seeing any in zoos either. I've only been to one zoo though - Chester zoo, maybe 10 years ago? I liked visiting, but I remember being sad at how many animals were in enclosures that were little more than concrete pits. I don't think I'd visit a zoo now if I got the chance even though I'd like to see a lot of animals.

I don't know what an opossom is. Is it similar to a possum? Playing possum......

Yey possums, fat fluffy gray rodent looking things which are actually marsupials. They show up in my yard on occasion. Sounds like my collecting ethics. I had some seaweed I was going to carve wands from, but it dried before I ever got around to it, and I discovered that it would have dried black and shriveled anyhow. One of these years I'll get around to a wand or staff. H. Potter was a brief touch of inspiration there.

It sounds like an exotic thing to have in the garden. Like Cleo talking about picking starfruit when she was youger just like I'd pick blackberries. The most exciting animals we get in the garden are foxes, hedgehogs, frogs, toads, newts and the occasional heron or duck. Possums sound a lot more interesting!

They're on the par with hedgehogs. A fox would be more exciting. My mom gets a bit more variation; herons, racoons. I used to keep the sliding glass door of her art studio open a couple inches to smoke. Once we went down and three coons had broken in to raid some empty eggs she was painting. All three (they were fat) tried making it out the door at once in frantic leap frog activity. It was hysterical. Mom was pissed about the heron, they would eat her expensive coy in the little waterfall pond she had made in the back yard. I had the weirdest dream. It took place with four gabby teens on a red couch on a black platform like a cartoon with a gymnastic guantlet in front of them. In retrospect it was a sado-maschistic spoof of Sartre's 'no exit', done in perplexing abstract like a mousketeer club, twister game. Judy pole vaults over an obstacle, and the announcer cuts in with cartoon bubbles "Poor Judy, Judy is dead" (audience roars, teens on red couch stop cackling and look apprehensive at eachother) camera points at judy now on another lonely black platform now in a dark-gray jumpsuit instead of the glossy black satin. Points at main platform ceiling full of lights "Live sky", camera points at darkness over judy "Dead sky", pans left at floodlight "but there is a moon", pans back to judy now groping mime-like wearing full black eye-mask "..but judy can't see it, she's dead".
Alas, it so resembles C.'s comics.

Herons can be irritating when you have fish, but I still like to see them.

at the raccons! Reminds me of Ratty (one of our first rats) managing to get into our biscuit tin (a proper tin that was hard to open) and running across the floor with a whole biscuit. He had to hold his head up, but the biscuit still trailed along the floor.

It does sound like a strange dream. But what do dreams really mean? I hope nothing because I've had a few weird ones!

Ah, your up. I recall my cousins rat spending all afternoon to push an orange up the carpeted stairs to his nest under the bunk-bed. He really had to stretch. Must have been quite a workout. My bro had a rat called 'wrong-way'. He left the family shortly after biting the palm of my two year old daughter. Not sure if she had food, or wasn't nice, but there's a chance rats do have that fabled instinct for picking on babies.

So I am. And it's nearly 3am too. I slept in until 1 o' clock this afternoon. I needed it after only having a couple of hours the night before, but now I'm not tired. At all. Ah well. My mum's home tomorrow (today)

None of our rats has ever been around kids that young. We had a 3 year old hold one once. He was very nervous and that made the rat nervous and scrabble to get away. I've rarely been bitten. Our first rats were young-adults when we got them and hadn't been handled. They nipped ab it for the first few weeks. Since then, I've only ever been bitten once by a rat that went really weird after getting a tumour. He became viscious. Occasionally they nip when they grab food, but it's not intended and they always let go. In fact, you can do soem really mean things to them and they don't bite, no matter how scared they are. Wehave to bath them sometimes if they get mites or lice. Almost all of them hate it and try desperately to escape. But despite the fact that you're dunking them in water and rubbing foul smelling shampoo all over them, they don't bite.

I love having ratties

Sounds like you've gone through quite a few rats. My cats put up with baths. It's an art to calm them and not get scratched. They will climb walls of glass if they freak out. Do you have any rats now?

We've been keeping rats for 10 years now. They don't live long and we've almost always had more than one (sometime even 5) at once. We have two at the moment, but they may be the last They'll probably be around for another year. But by then, only my younger brother will still be living at home all the time with my parents and he won't be aorund for much longer. My mum likes having rats, but I doubt she'll keep having them when we're all gone.

You might provide her with a steady supply so she deosn't go through withdrawal from her family life, like a sort of continuity connection to her kids away from home.

She will miss us. She left work to have my older brother 21 years ago and never went back. Her daily routine has involved doing household chores then greeting us as we came home from school (or collecting us when we were younger), cooking our teas. She said that when we were little, she would sometimes feel lonely because she wouldn't have much adult contact until my dad got home, but I think we're grown up enough for her now

I can't imagine not staying in touch with her, but I think it must be easy to let it slide a bit when you've left. My older brother doesn't phone that often when he's at university, but he comes home to visit more often than I'll be able to. He's in Manchester which is just over the Pennines from Sheffield and just a short (about an hour) train ride away. Whether I go to Oxford or Edinburgh, it'll take me a lot longer than that to get home. Plus I'm likely to have Saturday lectures because I'm doing a science so I won't be able to come home for the weekends. She'll be living in an all male household. This past week while my mum's been on a course, I've realised how different that makes the house feel.

I don't want to leave now!

It was just my bro and I at home most of the time. Mom worked or dated back then. Every few months she'd have some work at home art business though, and sometimes we lived with her boyfriend a few years (like a step-dad). I left back when I was 17. Actually she did. She moved to another town, but I didn't want to transfer to another school late in my junior year, especially when i had a girlfriend that I ended up marrying, so I lived out of suitcases until I got a burger flipping job that paid for a cheap room. Then she got the job at the coin toss at the boardwalk (good start for an accountant) and we got a place together, married when she graduated highschool. My bro lived at home a few years more. and mom became an artist/housewife just after he left.

I couldn't stnd living just with my brother, either one. My younger one's easier to live with. More easy going and biddable. Not that I just want someone that I can boos about (although that helps) but it's nice to be able to ask someone to wash up and have them do it

My mum came home today, and I'm glad to see her.

I had no such luck getting complaince from my younger bro. I've been up all night, then went out shopping for antiques with a friend, then spent time on a survey with NSome going way on about cosmic physics in evolution towards us as a conscious planet sprouting a new eden for our inhabitants.

I'm quite a maternal figure to my younger brother. If my mum's not around, it naturally falls to me to look after him. We fall into those roles without effort. Last year he had a bad dream and sought me out (at about 2am) rather than wake my brother, who shares a room with him, or my father. He gets some test results on Monday. I hope everything's ok.

Did you find any antiques? I goto fairs sometimes, but I rarely see anything that really stands out. I saw a Whitby ammonite once, which had been carved into the shape of a snake. I wish I'd bought it now, but it was about £20 and at the time, I decided it was too much. And I once saw some amazing pieces of meteorite. Only small, but so heavy. They were metallic and really, really cold.

I saw your comment to NThenSome. I didn't read it though - it looked long! I'm pottering around an online news archive for stuff about the college I applied to. See if there's anything really bad. I got some financial forms back today - I'm going to be better off at university than I expected. I can claim almost £4000 per year from the government. It's just a loan but there's no interest to pay, and I don't have to pay anything back until I earn over £10,000 per annum. Plus, I only have to pay about £850 of the maximum £1,100 (per year) tuition fees. I was expecting to have to pay the whole shebang. I'm going to be able to end up completely in debt, but to the governmnet and not to a bank, which is good

Sounds good on the loan. I got a couple ancient stereo cards, and a couple recent watch rings. I'm wearing out otherwise I'd probably be going on about antiques or meteorites.

Wearing out doesn't sound so good. That's what happens when you stay up all night ten are busy in the day. It's nearly 2:30am here and I have to get up in the morning. Maybe I should do the sensible thing and go to bed. I'm not tired right now though.

I could just eat something though. Nothing snackable in the fridge. Cold, plain rice doesn't seem too appealing right now......

I just slept 15 hours and woke up at 9am (with a stiff neck). I think I'll get some work done today. Strange typo, typed nsome work. Maybe I'll visit or call him today. I think I wake up every day feeling at a less for any sort of working arrangement, then after a couple hors get rolling at whatever I'm working on and ignore the isuue becuase I've thought it to death already. I have plans. I just need to do them. I should get out my rice cooker. Choccolate covered almonds are not the most excellent diet. How do you eat rice. I either use it as cereal with milk and sugar, mix it with pineapple, bellpepper, onions, and nuts (thai), or make deluxe nachos (ingredients above plus beans, cheese, avocados, and salsa). Waiting till I realise I'm tired to go to sleep is what messes my schedule up, because I can always stay up later each night when I'm free to wake up anytime. and alarm clocks rarely wake me.

I am applying to become a US citizen. Yesterday I downloaded all the forms and filled them out and I just have to get two photos done and send copies of certain documents and a nice big fat check. Once I send the application they will contact me and tell me where to go to be fingerprinted. Then the FBI will do a background check to make sure I have good moral character. You are considered not to have good moral character if you have been married to more than one person at the same time I thought that was...mean.
Then I'll be scheduled a face to face interview/interrogation with an INS agent. I'll be tested on my ability to read, write and speak English and take a civics exam. If I do well, I can be an American and take an oath and renounce my allegiances to any other nations..yadayadayada

I am a little worried because for the interview part of this I am supposed to bring my British passport, which I haven't seen since I was 16????? I have no idea where it is. I'm going to call the INS monday and tell them this and hopefully I can just bring a birth certificate and my other photo ID's. Applying for a new British passport just so I can take it for the interview will be a big freakin' stupid expensive hassle. Considering they suggest that as soon as you are sworn in as an American that you should immediately get and American passport! UG!

In light of the events in the world, I thought I should bite the bullet and do this now. My alien card has to be renewed next June anyway so why not just go all the way and become a citizen. Also, in light of Sept. 11th, all resident aliens must notify the government any time they move. If I moved to the next town...they want to know. *sheesh* This is my home. I love my country. I don't see myself going back to England to live.