I could have sworn that I had a whole box of holiday cards, but since I couldn't find them anywhere, I just ordered some more. I'll have LOTS. So, if you'd like a holiday card, comment with your address! Comments are screened.

My stamps came yesterday, so I got a whole bunch of addresses from Postcrossing this morning. I just finished writing out a whole bunch of postcards. They're going all over: China, Croatia, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Arizona, North Carolina, Finland, Belarus, Russia... The best part is that I felt like doing something. I felt like reading earlier, too. It's not much, but it's something.

Pieter was over last night. We typed up his second essay for English. I think it came out pretty well. It generally seems to work well when he dictates and I write or type. It keeps me from interfering too much. Then we checked out our towns on Evony. Piet's a little bit obsessed right now, but he's talking about getting back into Magic, so I don't know how long it'll last. After that we watched one of the anime movies Piet bought at the Blockbuster that's closing. He started to fall asleep halfway through it, though, and had to head home. I finished watching it by myself. It was okay. The beginning was confusing, and it ended kind of abruptly, but there were some interesting things in it.

My sister's sick, so I still haven't seen her. She's been staying at my parents'. My mother said something about her having slides to show us. I guess she means on the computer.

My mother's asked for a crocheted blanket for Christmas. I don't know if I trust myself to finish another one in time. I may give her the one that's done and make the second one for myself. She loves the color and the size of the finished one, but there are some things that are technically wrong and inconsistent, so... I dunno.

And my mother's coming over tonight so I can perm her hair. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the meantime. I'll probably need a nap at some point, since I woke up at 4:30 this morning. I don't know. I'll read a little, watch at least part of a movie, and spend a lot of time staring into space doing nothing. I need to go shopping, but I keep putting it off. Maybe tomorrow.

I haven't sent any postcards in over two weeks, 'cause I haven't had 98¢ stamps. I hope my stamp order comes soon; I'm going through withdrawal.

Pieter was here last night. We worked on an outline for his second essay for English, and then came over here to the computer and played on Evony. Sherry's on, too, now, but Piet's been playing for her, mostly. She's on the same server as me, though, so now the Azul alliance has two members.

I looked at the pass prices for the TCM festival, and I looked at a couple of hotels in the area. All in all, it's a little bit too expensive for me. Oh well.

Read a little more Ovid this morning.

The rest of my movies came. Yay! I wish Kate were coming down sometime soon; I want her to see Girl on the Bridge.

My sister gets back from her trip today. I think my father's picking her up.

It seems like it's been ages since I listened to NPR. I should probably turn it on at 3, catch up on the news. I think my father wanted to get into an argument about current events the other night, but I didn't know what he was talking about, so it fizzled. It's just as well, since I'd rather not have any gratuitous Obama-bashing.

All this time, I've been pronouncing "pwn" wrong.

My brother and I have both been playing Evony, even though he said it sounded really boring. Heh. He's gonna try to get Sherry signed up on my server so we can be in the Azul alliance together. It's a little weird to be talking about a game with my brother again, but it's nice. We figure out his algebra and then compare our walls and academies and stuff.

I saw my counselor on Monday, and then I saw Rhonda the nurse practitioner yesterday morning. We're going up to 10 mg daily on the Abilify. I see her again in a month, and if things aren't better, she wants to add Celexa.

Pieter and Sherry came over Saturday and made a ham dinner. My parents joined us, and my father wound up staying until 1 or 2 a.m. watching Torchwood: Children of Earth with me. That was the first I'd seen of Torchwood.

I haven't read for a couple of days now. The last things I read were the end of Book 10 or 11 of the Metamorphoses, a couple of John Donne's satires, and the very very beginning of Adam Bede. I've mostly been watching TCM. I'm flirting with the idea of going out to California in April for the TCM festival. I'm pretty sure I won't do such a thing, though. I never do seem to do anything like that.

I need to go shopping for cat litter and vitamin D. I think I want to pick up some stuff to make a care package for Kate. I've got some ideas, but they're pretty normal. I'm trying to come up with a couple of different, odd things to put in there.

I finally bought LIlo & Stitch. I also bought The Philadelphia Story, Girl on the Bridge (finally on DVD! Yes!), Pride and Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightley), Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Grand Illusion.

I got bored the other night and decided to check out Evony, since I kept seeing ads for it on Neopets. It's not really a very good game, if you're bored, because once you get to a certain point, there's nothing to do but sit and wait for your villagers to produce more lumber or stone or iron or tax revenue.

Still reading The Sound and the Fury, which proves how little dedication I have to doing anything right now, including reading. It isn't as though it's a long book.

And that's about it. I've slept a lot today and had a lot of crazy dreams. Dreamt about acting and about being married to a guy from Australia named Nikolai. Odd.

I can't remember doing much yesterday besides sleep. [Makes a face.] So, I'm up tonight. I haven't even tried to go to sleep, though I did go upstairs and read for a while. My brother crashed on the couch after we finished watching Ong Bak 2. He's spending the night because he's borrowing my car to go to class tomorrow. He's over on the couch snoring right now. I want Azul to jump up and sleep on him, but Azul's not being cooperative.

Last time I looked at the "Latest Posts" feed, there didn't seem to be nearly as many spam accounts, so I'm going to try going back to open posts. I was going to say that it's so some of my non-LJ friends can keep up with me, but, really, who wants to bother? Anyway. I'll see what happens.

Dinner went as planned. Sherry, Pieter, and I got Jimmy John's and P. ate Subway, then we watched the GI Joe movie. I wish there was more Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it. I know. Don't look at me that way. They had to leave right after the movie, 'cause it was already past P.'s bedtime. I turned on BBC America and watched the news and cried while they talked about the Berlin Wall coming down. Znayu. But you have to remember that I spent most of 1986 in Austria and I was kind of, I dunno, probably unusually freaked out by the Cold War for a nine-year-old before that, and I thought the Iron Curtain would never come down and people would always have to go from Hungary to Austria by hiding among vegetables in trucks and there'd always be someone threatening to blow up the McDonald's in Vienna. So. I was a really weird kid and now I cry over a lot of stuff.

Then there was The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and then I decided to find a movie to watch. Picked 21. It was okay, except for a couple of times when I felt I was being treated like an idiot. I still don't know how to play blackjack, though, so maybe I am an idiot.

Pieter got his highest score yet on an algebra test. I'm proud. And none of his goofs involved mistakes with a + or -, which is pretty awesome. It's all notable for me 'cause I'm Piet's tutor, but the truth is that I don't do much tutoring. Mainly, he asks me questions when he has a problem with something and I talk until he goes, "Oh! Duh!"

And now it's 2:05 a.m. and I have nobody to talk to and I'm kinda thinking about going to the gas station for Gatorade and pop, but I'm limping 'cause I got a horrible cramp or something in my left calf and I don't want to go limp around in the cold just for some drinks. I'm a wimp.

It's been a while. I never seem to know what to post, since after listening to my father's interminable depressive grumblings, I don't feel like showing my own off. Some things have happened, though, so I can legitimately say stuff.

First, I finally packed my cat and some underwear up and moved. Azul and I are settled in our new home, which feels both very nice and a little overwhelming. Ideas of things to do are constantly chasing each other around my mind, and I don't even remember some of the big ones, like shoveling off the deck. Zuli's very happy. He's decided to beg, whether for food or attention, from anyone sitting at the dining room table. It's awfully cute. My parents spoil him ridiculously. I wish he'd stop nibbling on the fake Christmas tree, though. He keeps swallowing "needles" and getting a stomachache.

Second, I was supposed to retake the GRE today and completely fucking forgot about it.

Third, my brother isn't speaking to me.

Fourth, I met with an advisor in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences office on Thursday, and he confirmed that I'm in a tart academic pickle. He recommends that I don't return to class until next fall. Besides further contributing to the rot and neglect of my little gray cells, that costs me my health insurance. I need to convince him that I can come back for two classes and kick ass. How? Fuck if I know.

Fifth, I'm getting very weird about some things, and uncharacteristically angry about others, and I cannot make up my mind whether it's just stress and will pass or if I'm at the beginning of a nervous breakdown. Kate says it's probably just stress. My counselor says it's probably just stress, but to keep an eye on it. So to speak. So I'm trying to pay attention, but not freak myself out, which is awfully difficult, since one of the exact things that's wrong with me is that I go off the deep end about anything medical.

Is there anything else? I've been crocheting. I made a garland for my small fake Christmas tree. Or most of a garland. I got terribly bored toward the end and decided that it didn't really need to go all the way around the bottom. I made myself a headband and a small potholder. Mainly, though, I work on the motifs for what I'm going to call the Afghan Of Insomnia. I have Kate wanting to crochet now, too, except that her cats won't sit nicely on her lap and leave the yarn alone like mine does.

Oh, yes. Since my brother's mad at me, he decided that I'm not to take Yoda. So Azul and I will be here by ourselves until I figure out how to afford adopting one (or maybe two) of the many, many cats who need homes.

I haven't been reading much. No, I've been enjoying the On Demand a little too much. I did finally finish Anatomy of a Murder, though. I came down with a pretty nasty sinus infection last week, and I'm still recovering. I got a collection of Chekhov's plays at the thrift store, and I find myself wanting to read it. Somehow I never can remember that when I have the energy for it, though, and don't need filler reading, like, uh, coffee house mysteries.

Nothing makes you feel shitty quite the way spending an entire day on the fold-down couch in the living room of a small hotel suite in Chicago and doing nothing but watching television and eating crappy food (because you can't leave the room to smoke, since your brother took the only key to therapy with him) makes you feel shitty. You can add the kind of shitty you feel after a very freaky dream that feels like it lasted for 12 hours, too. I think I'd like to stop dreaming about airports, now. I don't mind dreaming about movies, though dreaming you're an idiot interviewer is something other than pleasant. And then Nancy Spungeon showed up, and how could that ever be a good thing, you know? Nancy isn't my fault, though; she showed up because of the autopsy documentary I watched.