Big Random Post
Jul. 24th, 2006 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Another big random post. I'm going to warn in advance that this one will be a little whinier than usual... just noticed that a number of topics have touched on wistful yearnings and such, which tends to lead to mildly depressed thoughts. So if you have low tolerance for that sort of thing, you might want to skip.
Dream Foo, first! Another 'school dream', with wistfulness.
Okay, I remember little bits of this dream. I recall something happening in the computer lab with some people I really did go to high school with. I can't remember _what_, but I remember it was there.
Anyway, the big part of the dream that I remembered was (as it usually is) what happened just before I woke up. I was late for class. It was sort of a first day situation, so when I came in everyone had chosen their seats already for the year. As it turned out, who you were seated beside (they were in little sets of two) was who your partner was going to be in the major projects of the year.
The only seat left was beside a girl, so I figured, wooho, I lucked out. She was blonde, and introduced herself as 'Meikong' and although I didn't say it I thought 'huh, like the Meikong Delta in Vietnam? That's a little weird, should ask her about that sometime' (and no, I have no idea why I know that the Meikong Delta is in Vietnam, or why it appeared in a dream, but I looked it up to be sure, and I was correct, although I think the accepted spelling is Mekong, so my dreaming mind isn't the greatest speller).
Anyway, I could tell she was into me (which should have been clue #1 it was a dream, as I've never, ever, had that feeling in real life), and there was some discussion about being glad to have a cool seeming partner. And I was extremely pleased that it might turn out to be a chance for something more than just working together.
So yeah, waking up from that one and realizing it was a dream was mildly depressing, as those kind of dreams always are.
Anyway, since people I went to school with did appear in the dream, I did some idle googling of the names of people I remember but I haven't heard of pretty much since HS.
Actually, many of them I got no hits (which was actually pretty odd.. I could understand seeing a bunch of hits that I couldn't tell if it was them or someone else with the same name, but no hits is a little odd in today's day and age). And of course there were a fair bit that I didn't know if it was them or someone else, or the name was too common, etc, or there was one reference I was sure was them but it was just their name on a university thingamajig from years ago.
Two, though, I found the actual people and knew it because there were pictures.
One was my big crush in Grade 11. She's apparently an office assistant for some company in financial somethingorother. She was also the crush that there was, at the time, the most hope of anything actually happening. Oddly enough (working back to the dream... remember, I looked this up _after_ the dream. Of course, the dream was probably one of the reasons I decided to look her up, so maybe it's not entirely random anyway)...
a) we met in bio class, she was my lab partner because we were seated next to each other.
b) she was, I believe, Vietnamese in origin. (To be honest, my memory is a little weak and I can't remember if she was Vietnamese or someone else in the class who sat right in front of us was, or both. I do know that her last name is not uncommon in Vietnam).
Anyway, we (along with one of the girls in front of us) hung out a fair bit, even going to lunch as a group about once a week. We even had a quasi-date - going to see a movie together, but in with a group of others. I guess in retrospect it might have been intended as a date on her end (she asked), but I couldn't wrap my head around it being anything other than a 'friends' thing.
To make a long story short, I was too chicken to make anything happened. I managed to get one of my (female) friends to try and clue her in that I liked her, but she reported back that she (the crush) didn't believe her and would have to hear it from me. And guess what happened? If you guessed nothing, you win the prize. Couldn't do it. Next year we were in different classes, and I barely saw her, so the feelings faded.
Anyway, I idly thought of emailing her, but then realized the state of my life, got a go nowhere job and have pretty much wasted the last few years of my life, whereas she's actually 'grown up' to a degree. So yeah, no, not much chance of that.
The other 'hit' I got when googling my classmates was a guy who was probably one of my best friends during high school. The hit was a testimonials page from a wedding photographer. I knew it was him because one of the wedding photos was there on the page too. I hadn't even heard he was getting married, but then, again, we haven't been in touch in about 10 years. Looks about the same, maybe balding a bit. Don't know his wife of course, but then he didn't really date anyone in high school either so the chances I would was slim. Good for him though, hope he's happy.
He marks the second person I know of from HS who's married now, assuming the first one's went through (they were engaged when I learned of it, and haven't heard from them since... that was the female friend who approached my grade 11 crush on my behalf, actually).
Must try not to reflect much more on people I knew getting married.
Edit: Yesterday I checked out the other person I know of who may or may not be married, using her maiden name - biggest surprise there. She's now a chiropractor in London, England (I say that to distinguish it from London, Ontario, which wouldn't be all that surprising). Weird. Feels like I'm caught in a little time bubble while everyone else moves on. Jeffty is five. Or in this case 18.
Ah, nostalgia.
Moving on, a meme. Stolen from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_cinn:
If you had your choice of any celebrity or ficitional character (living or dead) who would you choose to fill the following roles in your life:
I'm going with all fictional characters, and I'm generally going to assume that either I'm 18 (my 'mental' age), or that people in questions may be a little older than they are in canon (depending on the question), since my fandoms have a large 'high school age' proportion and it'd be a bit weird.
1. Who is your best friend? Veronica Mars
2. Who is your mother? Samantha Carter, SG-1 (which kinda works cause my mom is Air Force as it is). Or someone who has super powers that are passed on genetically.
3. Who is your father? Keith Mars (I suppose this would make Veronica my sister, too. Ehh, let's call him a stepfather and then we can be stepsiblings and best friends.
4. Who is your older sibling? Younger sibling?
Older: Malcolm Reynolds
Younger: Molly Hayes, Runaways
5. Who is your prom date? Mac from Veronica Mars
6. Who do you have a no-strings-attached one-night stand with? I'm really not interested in a no-strings-attached-one-night-stand. But if I had to answer, maybe Faith from Buffy.
7. Who do you date for a year or two? Pre-Lesbian Willow, maybe? Or Fred from Angel.
8. Who do you marry? Kitty Pryde.
9. Who is your boss? Scott Summers. Cause that'd make me an X-Man. But if he had to be my boss in an average job, no way. I'd choose that guy in the 70s show that Hyde worked for that didn't care if anyone did any work.
10. Who is your next door neighbor? The docs from Grey's Anatomy, cause if I get hurt on my X-Men missions and Beast isn't around, it's good to know some surgeons.
Book Foo:
Finished: Ender's Game, By Orson Scott Card (reread)
Started: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (reread) - Wednesdays
Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card (reread) - Fridays & Sundays + Laundry
Instead of going into deeper thoughts on Ender's Game, I think I'm going to list a few quotes that struck me more than usual this time around. Minor thoughts on NW and SFtD with only tiny spoilers.
I might make the quote thing a regular feature, as often when I read a book, and especially a reread, a particular passage jumps out at me. Not even a spoilery one, usually, just something in the course of a story that speaks to me. For Ender's Game, there's always been 'Remember, the enemy's gate is down!', but in my vaguely depressed mood lately a few more spoke to me:
"Whatever they did to Ender in the Battle School, they had spent his
ambition."
This is what I feel like has happened to me in university. And it's not even that University was hard... perhaps just the opposite. It was fairly easy, a few classes notwithstanding. And yet it left me with utterly no ambition left. Perhaps it's because I didn't have anything to build more ambition into me, nothing new to inspire me to want to be greater, and, in order to get through university classes no need to _struggle_ to make myself greater. Instead of being used up, it's like it just gradually dribbled out or evaporated while nobody was looking, and now I don't have any.
"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. ... Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."
And this is pretty much what my life is at now. I don't even really expect happiness out of my life, I'm just surviving and taking whatever small bits of happiness I encounter along the way.
(Hey, I warned you the post would be a bit emo).
Anyway, now I'm on to a reread of Neverwhere because I felt like something light for Wednesdays, and it's always fun to revisit Gaiman's work. The book's better than the miniseries, even though I've also idly been watching that as well (and I iconized the Marquis's "there there... there." attempt at comforting Door from that). Kinda wanna see a nice movie adaptation of it, but as usual with movies they'd probably screw it up. Another thing I think would be cool would be an ongoing series picking up from the end of the book. I think _some_ of the enjoyment of the first couple times I've read it has worn off a little.
And Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game. In contrast to the original, which I must have read more than a dozen times, I've only read Speaker twice, I think. Maybe only once. I recall having trouble keeping the children straight, but I haven't reached that point in the book yet. Of course, I remember the solution to various things about the Piggies, so it'll be interesting to read it while knowing the solution.
I actually feel the Bean books are more of a sequel in spirit to the Ender's game books.. Speaker feels like a completely different book that just uses a few elements and Ender himself, but the feel of the whole thing is different. And of course I think Ender's Game is the better book. But it should be interesting to reread the sequel.
Lessee, what else... I think that's it for now, actually. If I think of anything else it'll go in the next big random post.
Dream Foo, first! Another 'school dream', with wistfulness.
Okay, I remember little bits of this dream. I recall something happening in the computer lab with some people I really did go to high school with. I can't remember _what_, but I remember it was there.
Anyway, the big part of the dream that I remembered was (as it usually is) what happened just before I woke up. I was late for class. It was sort of a first day situation, so when I came in everyone had chosen their seats already for the year. As it turned out, who you were seated beside (they were in little sets of two) was who your partner was going to be in the major projects of the year.
The only seat left was beside a girl, so I figured, wooho, I lucked out. She was blonde, and introduced herself as 'Meikong' and although I didn't say it I thought 'huh, like the Meikong Delta in Vietnam? That's a little weird, should ask her about that sometime' (and no, I have no idea why I know that the Meikong Delta is in Vietnam, or why it appeared in a dream, but I looked it up to be sure, and I was correct, although I think the accepted spelling is Mekong, so my dreaming mind isn't the greatest speller).
Anyway, I could tell she was into me (which should have been clue #1 it was a dream, as I've never, ever, had that feeling in real life), and there was some discussion about being glad to have a cool seeming partner. And I was extremely pleased that it might turn out to be a chance for something more than just working together.
So yeah, waking up from that one and realizing it was a dream was mildly depressing, as those kind of dreams always are.
Anyway, since people I went to school with did appear in the dream, I did some idle googling of the names of people I remember but I haven't heard of pretty much since HS.
Actually, many of them I got no hits (which was actually pretty odd.. I could understand seeing a bunch of hits that I couldn't tell if it was them or someone else with the same name, but no hits is a little odd in today's day and age). And of course there were a fair bit that I didn't know if it was them or someone else, or the name was too common, etc, or there was one reference I was sure was them but it was just their name on a university thingamajig from years ago.
Two, though, I found the actual people and knew it because there were pictures.
One was my big crush in Grade 11. She's apparently an office assistant for some company in financial somethingorother. She was also the crush that there was, at the time, the most hope of anything actually happening. Oddly enough (working back to the dream... remember, I looked this up _after_ the dream. Of course, the dream was probably one of the reasons I decided to look her up, so maybe it's not entirely random anyway)...
a) we met in bio class, she was my lab partner because we were seated next to each other.
b) she was, I believe, Vietnamese in origin. (To be honest, my memory is a little weak and I can't remember if she was Vietnamese or someone else in the class who sat right in front of us was, or both. I do know that her last name is not uncommon in Vietnam).
Anyway, we (along with one of the girls in front of us) hung out a fair bit, even going to lunch as a group about once a week. We even had a quasi-date - going to see a movie together, but in with a group of others. I guess in retrospect it might have been intended as a date on her end (she asked), but I couldn't wrap my head around it being anything other than a 'friends' thing.
To make a long story short, I was too chicken to make anything happened. I managed to get one of my (female) friends to try and clue her in that I liked her, but she reported back that she (the crush) didn't believe her and would have to hear it from me. And guess what happened? If you guessed nothing, you win the prize. Couldn't do it. Next year we were in different classes, and I barely saw her, so the feelings faded.
Anyway, I idly thought of emailing her, but then realized the state of my life, got a go nowhere job and have pretty much wasted the last few years of my life, whereas she's actually 'grown up' to a degree. So yeah, no, not much chance of that.
The other 'hit' I got when googling my classmates was a guy who was probably one of my best friends during high school. The hit was a testimonials page from a wedding photographer. I knew it was him because one of the wedding photos was there on the page too. I hadn't even heard he was getting married, but then, again, we haven't been in touch in about 10 years. Looks about the same, maybe balding a bit. Don't know his wife of course, but then he didn't really date anyone in high school either so the chances I would was slim. Good for him though, hope he's happy.
He marks the second person I know of from HS who's married now, assuming the first one's went through (they were engaged when I learned of it, and haven't heard from them since... that was the female friend who approached my grade 11 crush on my behalf, actually).
Must try not to reflect much more on people I knew getting married.
Edit: Yesterday I checked out the other person I know of who may or may not be married, using her maiden name - biggest surprise there. She's now a chiropractor in London, England (I say that to distinguish it from London, Ontario, which wouldn't be all that surprising). Weird. Feels like I'm caught in a little time bubble while everyone else moves on. Jeffty is five. Or in this case 18.
Ah, nostalgia.
Moving on, a meme. Stolen from
_cinn: If you had your choice of any celebrity or ficitional character (living or dead) who would you choose to fill the following roles in your life:
I'm going with all fictional characters, and I'm generally going to assume that either I'm 18 (my 'mental' age), or that people in questions may be a little older than they are in canon (depending on the question), since my fandoms have a large 'high school age' proportion and it'd be a bit weird.
1. Who is your best friend? Veronica Mars
2. Who is your mother? Samantha Carter, SG-1 (which kinda works cause my mom is Air Force as it is). Or someone who has super powers that are passed on genetically.
3. Who is your father? Keith Mars (I suppose this would make Veronica my sister, too. Ehh, let's call him a stepfather and then we can be stepsiblings and best friends.
4. Who is your older sibling? Younger sibling?
Older: Malcolm Reynolds
Younger: Molly Hayes, Runaways
5. Who is your prom date? Mac from Veronica Mars
6. Who do you have a no-strings-attached one-night stand with? I'm really not interested in a no-strings-attached-one-night-stand. But if I had to answer, maybe Faith from Buffy.
7. Who do you date for a year or two? Pre-Lesbian Willow, maybe? Or Fred from Angel.
8. Who do you marry? Kitty Pryde.
9. Who is your boss? Scott Summers. Cause that'd make me an X-Man. But if he had to be my boss in an average job, no way. I'd choose that guy in the 70s show that Hyde worked for that didn't care if anyone did any work.
10. Who is your next door neighbor? The docs from Grey's Anatomy, cause if I get hurt on my X-Men missions and Beast isn't around, it's good to know some surgeons.
Book Foo:
Finished: Ender's Game, By Orson Scott Card (reread)
Started: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman (reread) - Wednesdays
Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card (reread) - Fridays & Sundays + Laundry
Instead of going into deeper thoughts on Ender's Game, I think I'm going to list a few quotes that struck me more than usual this time around. Minor thoughts on NW and SFtD with only tiny spoilers.
I might make the quote thing a regular feature, as often when I read a book, and especially a reread, a particular passage jumps out at me. Not even a spoilery one, usually, just something in the course of a story that speaks to me. For Ender's Game, there's always been 'Remember, the enemy's gate is down!', but in my vaguely depressed mood lately a few more spoke to me:
"Whatever they did to Ender in the Battle School, they had spent his
ambition."
This is what I feel like has happened to me in university. And it's not even that University was hard... perhaps just the opposite. It was fairly easy, a few classes notwithstanding. And yet it left me with utterly no ambition left. Perhaps it's because I didn't have anything to build more ambition into me, nothing new to inspire me to want to be greater, and, in order to get through university classes no need to _struggle_ to make myself greater. Instead of being used up, it's like it just gradually dribbled out or evaporated while nobody was looking, and now I don't have any.
"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. ... Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."
And this is pretty much what my life is at now. I don't even really expect happiness out of my life, I'm just surviving and taking whatever small bits of happiness I encounter along the way.
(Hey, I warned you the post would be a bit emo).
Anyway, now I'm on to a reread of Neverwhere because I felt like something light for Wednesdays, and it's always fun to revisit Gaiman's work. The book's better than the miniseries, even though I've also idly been watching that as well (and I iconized the Marquis's "there there... there." attempt at comforting Door from that). Kinda wanna see a nice movie adaptation of it, but as usual with movies they'd probably screw it up. Another thing I think would be cool would be an ongoing series picking up from the end of the book. I think _some_ of the enjoyment of the first couple times I've read it has worn off a little.
And Speaker for the Dead, the sequel to Ender's Game. In contrast to the original, which I must have read more than a dozen times, I've only read Speaker twice, I think. Maybe only once. I recall having trouble keeping the children straight, but I haven't reached that point in the book yet. Of course, I remember the solution to various things about the Piggies, so it'll be interesting to read it while knowing the solution.
I actually feel the Bean books are more of a sequel in spirit to the Ender's game books.. Speaker feels like a completely different book that just uses a few elements and Ender himself, but the feel of the whole thing is different. And of course I think Ender's Game is the better book. But it should be interesting to reread the sequel.
Lessee, what else... I think that's it for now, actually. If I think of anything else it'll go in the next big random post.
