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Notice: I'm more or less down to only one computer again; the fast one conked out again. I think it's just too powerful for its own good XD. And other Dreaded Real Life things are delaying me. I ask everybody's patience as the things I've scheduled to have finished on here last week are dragging out like crazy. Safety in Numbers and the blog-exclusive Unseen should stay on schedule, but not much else. Taking a bit of a break from Twisted Island, unfortunately. And obviously the Denizens edit period is gonna be longer than two weeks lol (but that was expected). If you've PMed me recently and not gotten a reply, please don't resend for about a month. Chances are I got it but just haven't had time to reply as everybody's questions are piling up like a domino car wreck in fog. Especially if you're PMing me about the OGD problem -- a solution had already been on its way for a while, just haven't had time to implement it.
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Obviously I failyoord to keep up the weekly blog thing these past two weeks. Been even more busy than I thought and I just won't have time. So for the time being I'm declaring a mostly-total break from BZP. Will try to still answer simple PMs and contest questions and the like. Still hoping to have all this stuff done by end of April. Also don't forget about the Blue MOCs contest which is still open!
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Enter before noon EST April 28th! Because I don't quite have time right now to finish that art lessons entry I promised (though it is aaaaalmost done), and 'cuz I need to accounce some stuff: 1) I'm extremely busy with real life stuff right now demanding that I barely spend any time on the computer each week. Mostly nothing super "dreaded" and is stuff I could put off, but I've been putting much of it off for a while now and I refuse to put it off any longer. So that is why yall aren't seeing me on much right now. This will probably last till late April (this assuming I'm not forced to take a second job, which is quite possible). 2) Pretty much the only thing I can keep up with right now is having a weekly blog entry. I'll try as hard as I can to maintain that. 3) Thanks to this I missed the epics recovery deadline for multiple chapters a day. So the rest of Captain of Treason is gonna be restored one chapter a day, if even that. Which means Twisted Island will be a long time in coming back, as I want to go back through in order again. 4) As for restoring anything else re: the last blog entry, I really have no idea when I'll have time. The glitch couldn't have come at a worse time for me. 5) On the plus side if I pull all this off right I will be clearing up a lot of time for later this year to go ahead and do both of those S&T contest ideas, one after another, that were mentioned in a previous entry, once the polls for the Time Capsule contest are over. 6) LOST rocks. 7) Send me avatar requests. I know that sounds silly since I said I'm busy, but one of my upcoming blog entries planned will demand I make a bunch more coolified avs, and I figure, why not kill two birds with one stone? This will be the next .ppt art guide, focused on lighting (and probably color too). I'll make yet another avatar for me, and also do some requests (Takuta-Nui, yours will be one of 'em). So for the time being, I'm accepting any and all av requests to draw in .ppt. Lighting effects especially welcome to be requested obviously. 8) Any Time Capsule questions I recommend to PM me in addition to posting the question in the topic. I'm not watching it for most of the week and when I'm checking in I don't have time necessarily, but I try to answer PMs right away. Also post the question in case someone else can answer it. 9) Aaaand the obligatory: Enter before noon EST April 28th!
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Just so yall know I'm not dead, I guess I'll do a quick updates entry. 1) I have figured out what my mental illness is. I have mentioned this many times, that I tend to take a lot longer than most people to react, and I focus on things way longer than normal people until I understand everything about it I can -- I basically can't help it -- and I've just been too lazy to bother getting a professional opinon. Well. I finally decided to visit a psychiatrist. Lucy Van Pelt: Do you have trouble paying attention? If you do, you have ADD -- Attention Deficit Disorder. bonesiii: I don't think that's quite it. Lucy Van Pelt: How about a tendency to say stupid things in a loud voice? If so, you have DIVIDE -- Dumb, Ignorant, Violent IDEology. bonesiii: Well, sort of, but I'm not sure. Lucy Van Pelt: Do have blackouts and wake up somewhere else? If you do, you have MUddled... Like... Two Personalities... Like... Yeah... Maybe you have DECIMAL. This is DECIMating Addiction to Lawyerspeak. Or maybe you have SUBTRACT. Do you think you have SUBTRACT? bonesiii What's SUBTRACT? Lucy Van Pelt: SUperattentive But Totally Ridiculously Annoying Chronic Thoughtfulness. bonesiii: THAT'S IT! Lucy Van Pelt: *flies backwards in the blast of sound, rolling around, papers flying* 2) I'm on a roll with my non-Bionicle fiction. So many ideas are comin' so fast -- ideas that are good enough I HAVE to use them -- that I can't keep up getting them down on paper or computer. That's why you may have noticed I haven't been around much last couple'a weeks. 3) Again, RPG version 3.2 is up, see the blog entry below. My main priority other than real life and my non-Bionicle fiction right now is working on a V3.3 as well for around Christmas release. With this one, no promises, though. 4) Sorry I missed a week with Captain of Treason, my current epic. >_< *goes to post a chapter* 5) I thought maybe another blog contest would be good to pass the time on the Bones Blog for the next month or so. I know I had that trivia one planned, but it's really supposed to go after the next Survurlode interview, which I don't have time to make right now. So any other ideas?
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Sorry I missed two entries. Various things delayed me the first week, but this is what delayed me the second week. If you've followed this blog long, you remember Esne from the memoriam entry for Penny, our golden retriever who passed away two years ago. Last Wednesday, Esne passed away as well. Esne was a Brittany we adopted. We usually called her "Ezzie" or just "Ez." Her previous life we don't know that much about, but she was owned by a homeless woman and lived in a car. She was already old when we got her, but full of enough spunk to be confused with a puppy. We never knew exactly how old she was. She had "fatty tumors" as they're called in her skin, but they weren't cancerous; just something that breed gets. She was medium sized for a dog. Ez was a very different dog than the other two dogs my family has owned during my lifetime. Penny and Duke were both Golden Retrievers. Duke loved playing fetch; Penny not as much, but she did play fetch sometimes. Ez almost never played fetch; she preferred walks and running in the yard. Sometimes she would get in the mood to throw a stuffed bone-shaped toy around, though. Penny would also leap at any opportunity to escape the yard's fence and run wild through the neighborhood, and sometimes Duke would as well. Not so with Ez -- she could be trusted totally with an open gate -- usually she would just go right to the car, because she loved car rides. She was a very friendly dog who never showed any aggression towards people, and always wanted to be near people. If we were in one room, she would be in that room most times. She was fascinated at first when we got Hunter (a cat), but Hunter soon tamed her with a few slaps (Hunter is declawed in her front paws). Ez left both of our cats (including our new cat, Buddy) alone -- the three animals could walk by each other for the most part as if they were all dogs. That never worked with Penny -- she would lunge at Hunter on sight so we had to keep them seperated. If there was a problem it was Hunter who would sometimes slap at Ez for no real reason other than she was there. In the last few weeks before her death, Ezzy's eyesight did start to go though and she started running into Hunter on accident. Ez loved walks. We used to walk her with Penny before her death. She always had a lot of energy and would run around the house if she hadn't had her walk. Unfortunately there were weeks where we didn't walk her as much as we should have. And she would pull or drag sometimes, especially if Mom didn't come (who usually walked her), or if it was raining, snow, cold, or hot. She especially would sometimes pull so much she would choke herself and start coughing so we had to stop and try to get her to slow down, although everybody tells me it was mostly just for me. We started watching the Dog Whisperer's show in recent years, and tried out his advice for being a good pack leader. For me the choke chain never worked with her unlike with the Retreivers; she wouldn't listen to it. I bought a harness that made it harder for her to choke herself and managed to train her to slow down or speed up with small tugs and better calm assertive energy (as Cesar puts it). Pretty much the last year or so of her life, she was the perfect dog in just about every way. Unfortunately she did develop a rather gross habit of trying to eat you-know-what in the yard or in the cat litter when she was hungry. But we figured out ways to train her not to with that too (and make sure she ate her food lol). She had previously had allergies to her other food that made her unbearably itchy to the point she would bite her skin raw. We finally found the right diet to end that, and made sure any fleas from the cats were destroyed. But Ez still would sometimes try to avoid eating that food unless we stood there and blocked her if she tried to leave. Also had a bad habit of snarfing it down too much. Anyways, I managed to correct her behavior in the yard simply by always gonig out with her and giving her a corrective tap like Cesar would and the "ch" sound if she sniffed a pile. Also would simply block her from going under our pine trees. By the end, I was pleased to see that she respected me perfectly as a pack leader. That was a cool feeling, if needed for rather strange reasons lol. I trained her to totally obey hand, movement, and sound signals for the most part in her last year, and she knew certain words well. If I wanted her to come, all I had to do was clap and hold my hand out. Sometimes twice -- she would always come. I could tell her not to go somewhere just by moving towards her a little with the right posture. If we were driving somewhere but couldn't take her, she always went to her green chair if we said "watch the house." She knew all the synonyms for "walk". Her favorite word was "drive". I could correct just about any behavior with a clap to get her attention back on me. To me her most endearing trait was her preference for her green chair. This is a broken chair with a matching footstool. One leg is gone, but we propped it up with a metal block. Partly out of sheer laziness and lack of budget. But also because Ez would have missed if it we threw it out. If nobody was in it, she would jump up on it anytime we were in that room. This is in the room we use to bag papers for the weekend delivery job and to watch TV -- if anyone was sitting in that chair and got up just for a second, bam, there would be Ezzy. She would move with a simple tap, though. Her breathing problems slowly got worse. She would as I said sometimes snarf down her food too fast and it would go down the wrong way and someone would have to do the Heimlich pushing thing on her stomach to get her breathing right, until we were able to train her to eat more slowly. The choking herself on the walk thing never came back, at least not for me, once we trained her to not pull so hard. She always breathed heavily, though, and there were times recently when it got really loud and she was clearly having some difficulty breathing. Her eyesight started slowly going, as well as her hearing. She never totally lost either though -- I remember that Duke was totally blind in last year or so. But she would run into things and cats. She wouldn't respond to sound corrections or calls as much. She also could not jump up on beds or into the car very well. She slept on the floor -- but upstairs; she could still climb steps up until her last day. We had to pick her up to get her into the car sometimes. She would stumble on things. In her last few days, she would sometimes trip just running or walking, on nothing but the floor or ground. On Wednesday of last week (July 30), Mom took her on a walk after sundown (when it was cooler). About halfway through the walk, Mom says she started slowing down and breathing heavily. They stopped to rest halfway, then continued home. Ez started breathing heavily again, and it just got worse as they got closer to home. When she got in the yard, she held her head up and stopped paying attention to her surroundings. She gasped for air very loudly, constantly. Mom carried her inside and yelled for me. I saw her standing like that, mouth wide open and loudly gasping for breath. She was salivating uncontrollably. I tried to do the Heimlich, hoping something was just stuck. I tried to calm her down, thinking she was just too worked up. It didn't change, except that her salivating got worse and her lungs started making a gurgling sound. Woke up Dad (he goes to work at around three in the morning so has to sleep early), and called emergency vet. The person on the line could hear her breathing and said "Is that her? Get her in here right away!" We drove there. Man, those red lights were tense... Took maybe fifteen minutes, not sure. The salivating was more like foaming at the mouth now and had to be wiped every few minutes, and her breathing was still just as bad. When we got there, someone was standing outside and saw her, said her gums were purple. They took her in right away and had us wait in a waiting room. Long story that I am not sure I totally remember correctly short, the vet was pretty sure there was nothing that could be done. It was a condition having to do with the larynx that happens with older dogs sometimes. We had two options. One, a thousand-dollar procedure involving a breathing tube that probably wouldn't work and would put Ez through a lot of pain. Even if it worked, this whole thing would almost certainly happen again soon, and worse that time. The other choice was to put her down. We decided we had to go with the second option. Mom, Dad, and I said goodbye to her. She was laying on her side in a large metal box with a clear plastic door, with oxygen being pumped into it, still gasping, though she wasn't as purple as before. She didn't respond to us at all. I had to fight tears. Then the vet gave her a sedative, and we left the room. After she was gone, the vet told us we definately made the right call -- the larynx condition was secondary. She had something like pus or an infection in her lungs that they couldn't have done anything to cure, so the procedure wouldn't have done any good. My brother was away at a camp, and my sister doesn't live here anymore and was working at the time. Neither knew until the weekend. I started writing this blog entry on Thursday, but I just haven't been able to write it. It's hard to finish even now. I hate death. May death burn for a thousand years and then be destroyed forever. I can see that this is very long now, so I guess I'll leave it at that. I'll miss you, Ezzy!
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Crunch Time Into Bits, Ban Coffee, & Answer This Question
bonesiii posted a blog entry in blogs_blog_39
Blog Question: Sidebar Content Block length. What do you guys think? Is it best if I cut out a lot of that content so that there are barely any sidebars at all and it's kept really short? Or do you guys like having lotsa stuff on the sidebars to read? I'm torn between cutting out all the quotes and the complaint topic archive, putting them in blog entries and keeping the images only except for the lists of award winners stuff -- or between cutting out just a few things to tidy up. Dreaded Real Life: One class down, two to go! I had to pull my first ever true all-nighter to finish that History Methods essay Sunday night. Wasn't as great of quality as I used to be able to produce sans a job, and I'm basically resigned to the fact that I'll only barely pass that class and my GPA will go down to a 3.6 something as opposed to the current 3.7. But whatever. I don't care anymore. I just want college to be over. Note: I did that totally without any performance enhancing drugs. That is, coffee. Once one of you suggested drinking coffee. I never got around to posting my rant. Coffee is a performance-enhancing drug and should be illegal. In sports, everybody whines when someone takes steriods to get an edge over the competition. Yet in our workplaces, we allow the equivalent to run rampant. This is wrong. Coffee is a drug that manipulates your body and can cause addiction. I say no. I refuse to use any drugs to "get an edge." Other than cheese. But it's not really a drug. And it doesn't count as an addiction because, ya know, it's cheese. Anyways, I refuse to accept the premise that if I cannot stay awake to complete an overloaded to-do-list, I should use drugs to overcome my exhaustion. NO! Guess what would happen if everybody drank coffee? Professors would assign ridiculously more amounts of homework because "you can handle it now." EVIL! It's already happening, and you know it's been happening for years in the workplace. Imagine if all coffee suddenly was recalled for e-coli or whatever. Our economy would come to a crashing halt. You know it. Break free! JUST. SAY. NO. Wean yourself from the addiction! Seek help! Be free to be you, not a Coffeeholic! *ahem* As I was saying. Two more days, and then the entire planet is going to hear echoes from my shout of joy. I am going to be free of the shackles of evil homework FOREVER! MUAHAHAHAHA! -
Various Updates: For some reason, the blog software isn't letting me post my "Friends Can Disagree" entry, which is written. Although, I needed to cut down on some of it cuz it got too wordy IMO. I've had longer entries so glitch is something else. Hunting it down. (Lol, this is the first image-free entry I've ever done I think -- I'm out of time.) For now, other updates I wanted to post: Has anyone made a "What Would You Name Makuta?" topic yet? Because most of you complaining about the name haven't suggested what you would have tried to run through legal. Somebody was talking about making one yesterday but I can't find one. Dun' wanna make a dupe. Epic 3 is done. Aside from a few names here and there I need to insert. I wrote it with a "possible future" outline handy, but let the story go where it had to, and I was actually very surprised by how it turned out. Some things I had planned went completely differently. I tell you, when you get into the characters, setting, sitaution, etc. enough, the story writes itself and it's just as thrilling, if not much more so, as reading. Plans for what's coming next in the Paracosmos have had to shift slightly, but in a very good way; I'm finally comfortable with the setup of the epics coming next, and the necessities for what the Metru Nui flashback must have are looking more coherent than before, so that's good too. It's coming out so that, I think, that part of the series will be way more mysterious than officially, because I'm focusing on aspects of mystery that are only hinted at during the Mata Nui saga, so it will be more of new ground that happens to be in the past than the history of old ground. So now Ojh and I have to somehow find time to finish the RPG skeletal version. Not sure what to expect here; see below. If I think it drags on too long, I'll begin releasing Epic 3 chapters in the Library. But iiiiiiiiif possible (IF), I will try to do as much as I can myself, since Ojh (who normally handles code) is very busy. I believe that I can handle a lot of the final coding, and if we have to, we can just skip the in-between battles that are left, since we already have most of the story done. My belief might be foolish. We'll see. Real life update: Possible bad news. Things aren't looking good financially right now and I might have to get another job. Everything's up in the air right and I'm not sure what I am planning on quitting here to compensate. Problem is, it seems like I'm the only one here who does the things I do (when I can), and so that's sorta been an anchor keeping me here. I haven't made any decisions yet, other than that I cannot abandon writing -- that is my life. Also I do plan on keeping this a weekly blog no matter what. Everything else... we'll see.Edit: Ahhhhh! I had too many bold tags. Mkay, friends entry is ready as a draft. I'll wait til Thursday for it though. Guys, question: Does my "important points are Bold for quick reading" approach help you with the longer entries? Because apparently there's a mysterious limit to how much of it can be used. I get tired of using it too.
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I may be the only person on Earth with this job. I have/am getting a new task as part of my newspaper delivery job that I can get paid for. It's a great example of irony, because I am now making maps for the deliverers with Powerpoint. It's like the fusion of the main character of my Paracosmos RPG -- a Ta-Koronan mapmaker -- with my coolified artwork, and real life. XD I had made one for our own half-a-zip-code a while back and just revamped it, that shows easy-to-read dots for the DNDs and VIPs (Do Not Delivers and Very Important People/Persons/Whatever). It's easy to update in Powerpoint when we get new DNDs/VIPs, and has a section to keep track of the mileage on the cars for tax purposes. So a week or so ago I showed it to my bosses, and they liked it so much they want me to make maps for other sections of the city, possibly even the whole city eventually. We haven't yet figured out what my pay will be; obviously it will be less than a professional 'cuz I'm using Powerpoint, heh. Downside for you guys is, it'll take a lot of time I won't be spending on BZP or writing my epic, working on the RPG, etc. But it's only temporary, most likely, since once I have each map done I'll give the files to my bosses or the other deliverers with easy instructions on adding new dots. In other news: Many thanks to Toaraga for awarding me the Blog of the Week on Sunday! I enjoyed the article, too. And thanks to everyone who has congratsed me.
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Just letting yall know that I'll be swamped until Thursday or Friday of next week. Finals week. Just to make it clear I haven't forgotten I have a blog. The Peeves contest entry period has ended, as you probably know. Some winners have been chosen, but nothing's set in stone till I have more time to sit down and read/think about it. A lot of great entries, and it's gonna be fun to draw the winning creatures. I think if I have time in the distant future I'll do more contests like this.
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Been a while since I've done a Dreaded Real Life entry, and figured I might as well announce a few other things along with that: Blog: -- I've revamped tons of imagery and such for the Bones Blog. The cheesy example skull from this entry: Vector Art in Powerpoint: Quality, Inexpensive, Easy inspired me to make a real one. Not as an av -- I still like my avvie as is -- but for blog stuffishness like the main pic at the top of the sidebars. It's also used for the brand new Skull of Approval for blogs: Omi and ToM have earned it so far. Lotsa past entries could win; haven't decided if I'm gonna do that or just award for new entries. Feel free to make suggestions, just like the bonesiii Gold Key to Nongu award for theories, except with this blog award, I decide purely on my own reasons. New sidebar content block added for that, listing winners. Note that it's blog entries that wins, not the blog in general, so you can win more than once. Revamped my categories, adding "debate" and "coolified artwork", and changing "Other" to "Ectetera." The two guides to Powerpoint are the main things in "Coolified", as well as the Ruthless Elegance: A Visual Guide to Cool entry (one of my top favorite entries). Also cooler banners, standard for the six main categs, and three special banners for my main creative writing serieseses. Lotsa more entries planned for the future. My free time and typing/drawing speed can't keep up with my ideas at the moment. I wanna keep posting them often; we'll see how that goes with evil homework and such. Real Life: In my final semester of college (fiiinally). Done with four semesters of German (I'm actually teaching Ojhilom German now; my homeschooled brother), done with vast majority of everything else. Taking a poetry workshop, which I'm shocked to find that I'm enjoying the most and the class is liking my poems. I might post some of my best poems here later. I think of myself as a prose writer, not a poet, but maybe I should think of myself as both. I'm learning fast; there's a lot to poetry that I never realized. BTW, that prof is hereby exempt from the status of evil professor. The history methods seminar prof is not even close to exempt. Ugh, evil homework galore with that class. All this fancy stuff due with barely any lecturing at all -- how we supposed to learn if not taught? This is the main reason I'm not on here much getting things done. Also taking a senior capstone with the poetry guy, basically a workshop with info about publishing and such. Another good one. Got a weekend paper delivery job now. Before this Friday, it took almost all of my free time on the weekend; literally out there walking from house to house from sunup to sundown on Sat and bagging all afternoon on Fri. Plus side is we're really popular with the bigwigs 'cuz we do a better job than most everybody else. Whole family helps, paychecks go in my name. Had to take it 'cuz my dad lost his job; he's in tool and die and that whole industry is just dying in our area. Thankfully, today he started a new job. I enjoy it, so no complaints. It's not evil like homework -- with college I slave away at it, and I have to pay them rediculous summages so they can torture me. It's extortion, really. I'm lucky enough that I enjoy learning so I haven't yet lost my mind (I think ). Of course the pay isn't that great, but I work here for free. I say before this Friday 'cuz the other paper in the area stole our two biggest advertisers, so technically the company I worked for ceased to exist, as it was a delivery company that included a newspaper and ad packs. But the newspaper is still gonna get delivered and due to being popular with the bigwigs I got hired there last week. Start this Friday, driving and throwing out at driveways this time instead of walking, and taking half a zipcode instead of a neighborhood. No idea what it will be like. After college be over, not sure what I'll do other than just try to get some other job. So no idea how that will affect BZP time. I hope, hope to have more time when I graduate. One thing I am reasonably certain of -- I would prefer a job with no homework. (Had my prof tell me he thinks I'd make a good teacher -- when I talk, people listen. I suppose I would, but I'd have to grade stuff! ) Oh, BTW, I'm on the Dean's list at my college. I don' remember if I ever said that here. It's really annoying; they're always mailing me "Buy this fancy class ring! Sign up for this group that meets every week taking away what little free time you had left!" I wasn't trying to get on the Dean's list. All I did was my homework. The other students are the ones that decided not to get all "A"s. But whatever. It's cool anyways. (In all seriousness, having no job until now helped. Most of my fellow students have jobs, and not just on the weekend, so it's understandable. I'm feelin' that pressure now even with this job and it's quite possible I'll have to struggle to keep a "B" in the methods seminar. Tryin, tryin... Last thing I would do is quit the job; I support the paper and they really do need reliable deliverers.) BZP: There's another BRC topic in the works. Freetime willing, we should be able to get that sometime next month. I was hoping for October... we'll see. Nothing superduper amazing but it should be helpful. Also tons of updates and stuff needed with the BRC existing topics, including many things that are my responsibility. *reminds self* Blame the evil profs. Paracosmos Computer RPG: The RPG isn't dead, it's just that all these other things are priority and progress is going slooooow. We really have the Le-Wahi update almost done and what's left is almost all Ojhilom's department, but he's got a lot going on too. I reeeeeeally wanna put that update online cuz it roxorz, especially the (only for now) Le-Koro minigame. My fav so far; both Ojh and I spend more time playing it than coding. There's also a lot done for the final level, and I loooooove that soooooo much, the rest pales in comparison. But also a looot to do; I'm torn between trying to get a skeletal version of that up, or putting it off so I can get just Le-Koro up. Hrm. ... Did I forget something? Eh, probably.
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Yes, yes! Believe it or not, I'm still alive! My prediction that I'd be super busy thanks to this college semester has unfortunately turned out to be very very very true--I basically have no time for BZP except a few hours sometime on the weekend, and wednesday. I've basically retired from my modding duties except if I have a spare minute or two. I'm still coordinating a project coming up for Reference which I think you guys will like--nothing too fancy since none of us really have time for much right now on the reference staff, but will come in handy. (Yes, classified. ) And yeah, still posting epic chapters, lol. That update for the RPG is taking longer than I hoped, but Ojh has almost got it ready. Hoping to get that up this weekend. In general though, I'm completely swamped with homework. On the plus side, though, at least I'm enjoying the subjects I'm studying. WWII, a subject I'd tried to get for a while but wasn't working with me schedule, continuing German, and got two lit courses that are pretty interesting. The main creme of the crop though is linguistics, a subject that's fascinated me since I was a little tot. The /fonεtIk sImbolz/ are really handy to know, and the principles behind linguistics in general are fascinating. I'm pleased to find that many of my own personal observations I made back when I was just a young teenager turned out to be accurate (), and it's really cool to be able to get some systematic study of accents and sounds that don't appear in english. (But of course linguistics is about much more than just auditory sounds!) Es ist so kuhl! And everybody should take a WWII course sometime in their life--there's just so much that's super relevant to our lives today, both in the fact that we live the way we do because of it and because of vital lessons to be learned from mistakes and good choices made in it. In those violence debates, WWII gets cited as an example a lot but apparently overlooked even then by most--it really shouldn't be. A careful understanding of that war and what was going on and why can reveal so much that is applicable not just to real life but to Bionicle and pretty much any fiction dealing with a struggle between good and evil. Plus it rocks. This course focuses on video footage from the war, which really keeps boredom out of the subject, definately a plus. And ironically taking German turns out to be pretty useful in two of the other classes--I can understand a word here and there in the German videos, understand some important linguistic facts since English and German share common roots. Huzzah for cool subjects! (But not for whoever invented homework... )
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I've had the Post New Entry page up here for a few hours trying to figure out how to begin this... I guess perhaps this is the best way to do it: I don't know. When I said the Dreaded real life was attacking, I didn't realize it was attacking this strongly. One of my family's two dogs just died Monday, Penny. Golden Retriever, only 9 years old (compared to an average 12). We got Penny a few years after our last dog, Duke died (he was also a Golden, and lived to an amazing 15 years). She was an excitable puppy, and I remember she liked to try to eat a yellow ended toy golf club, and she was convinced that carpet was her territory for a long time. Once tamed, and for so many years, she was the sweetest dog you could imagine. She loved to high-five (I taught her that'n!), and get brushed. She'd sometimes run like a bullet all over the yard, chasing a ball or just for fun. She liked to chase ducks in water, and on land she liked to chase squirrels, though if she caught them she hadn't the foggiest idea what to do with them, and just let 'em wriggle loose. She enlisted dutifully in the War Against Cats, as the Sphinx Queen of the Upstairs, Hunter, will attest, but was always outsmarted, lol. Most of all she liked walks in the neighborhood or in metroparks. Lately she had to get used to Ezzy, the second dog (I think her name is technically spelled "Esne", but we just call her Ezzy, lol--she was adopted from a dog rescue service my parents are part of), and a regular part of the day is was to walk them around the neighborhood. Unfortunately, she wasn't as lucky as Duke in her old age. This wasn't a total surprise; she had had epilepsy for several years, and probably lived a lot longer than she would have if we hadn't gotten her on epilepsy pills. I still remember the day we found that out--we'd just finished watching Jurassic Park on some TV channel, and I looked over at Penny, and her eyes had turned red. I tell ya, not fun, especially since nobody had any idea what that meant (it was a seizure). The pills stopped that, thankfully. (Why is it that that feels like just yesterday?) Lately, she started to drag slightly behind on walks, which we of course just assumed was arthritis, since she was old... But it got worse, and she seemed to have trouble breathing... and one night she was coughing up blood. It turns out she was anemic, and nobody could figure out why. That was back in early August, and she just got worse from there. All along she was as sweet as always--the emergency vet remarked that there are three kinds of pets--dogs, cats, and Golden Retrievers. Goldens like Penny are just so friendly. We put her on medicine that seemed to help for a while, but she wasn't showing the right side effects of wanting to eat a lot that the medicine was supposed to make (instead, it was hard to get her to eat). She got weaker and weaker, until we discovered that her muscles were shrinking. Near the end, she couldn't even stand up on her own, her neck felt thinner than my wrist, and her leg muscles were practically not there. It was like my member name "bones" had become real for Penny. I got to say goodbye on Monday morning before heading into classes--we expected what might be coming, and my parents took her to the vet while I was in class. All day I knew that she might be put down, and I tell ya, that was for me the worst part, being in class while it ended. It was the second week of classes, and missing now would be unwise, but I feel like I should have been there. I was there when Duke died, and I'd always thought I'd be there for Penny. She had to be put down--the vet found a tumor that was literally sucking her blood away from the rest of her body. They couldn't even get blood into the legs to take a blood test. And then she was gone. I still can't believe it, I don't think it's sunk in. On the one hand it wasn't a surprise, but on the other, she was way too young for her breed to die already. And it all happened so fast. One week everything was normal, the next we were already used to her having to struggle to stand up. Now it just feels like she has slipped into a different room and she'll walk back in any second. I'm just glad I did get to say goodbye, and she was still responsive at the time. Well. I hope this does her justice in some small way--we'll miss you Penny!
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Well, this semester of college has started up, and now that the first week is over and I have the syllabi and such, I can officially say that I am going to be absolutely swamped. Just a heads up guys that I might not be anywhere near as active as y'all are used to--it would be appreciated if people keep that in mind when considering PMing me about things not vitally important or whatnot. At this point I'm just hoping I won't have to resign from any of my BZP duties, though I'm almost sure something's gonna have to change. The RPG is a huge priority for me right now--it's not as important as other things on BZP but that is the reason it got postponed in the first place. I can't postpone anymore, so that is what most of my free time will have to be devoted to right now. So I'm pretty sure you won't see me writing very many of these longs posts and such or even modding much. I predict yall will sneak several complaint topics past me. *tricksy little hobbitses* At the very least, expect to see me take breaks from BZP this fall. *glares at Dreaded Real Life*
