RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING: JUST LITTLE STUFF EDITION

1) Well, at least one mystery is solved!  In one of my last entries from Florida, I told you about spraying my face with someone's sunblock and getting a horrible, horrible rash.  Remember?  Well, it has recently come to my attention that what I sprayed all over my face was not sunscreen.  I grabbed one of the many cans sitting on the edge of the counter while on my way out the door.  All I remembered was that the bottle was labeled "Cutter" and it was a green container.  As it turns out, it wasn't sunscreen at all. It was some kind of powerful bug repellent.  I sprayed bug repellent all over my face and rubbed it into my skin.  I guess I'm lucky that I wasn't poisoned or something.

I am a genius.

2) I have to go back to the doctor on Tuesday for a check up, and the hateful nurse is going to be there.  I'm already getting nervous thinking about it.  I hate that this woman makes me feel like a 10 year old.  I can already hear her in my head and it's making me cringy.  :(

Oh, and speaking of doctors, I went for what should have been my last CT scan last week!  Woo-Hoo!  I also have to go see the pulmonologist this week, but if everything has stayed the same (or gotten better, which I have no reason to believe it hasn't) I shouldn't have to go back again until next year, if even that!  Yay!

3) An update on my hair, because I'm sure you're fascinated.  Everyone (except Steve) seemed to really like it!  Eh, he's just jealous that I have hair to dye! HA! It has faded quite a bit, which has made it look bright pink under florescent lights, kind of peachy-red in indirect sunlight, and in one unfortunate (and now deleted) photograph it looked bright purple - which made me look like a clown. At any rate, I still like it, but it is starting to look a bit odd. It's fading out in stripes instead of uniformly fading all over. I'm a pinky-red-brown tiger now, I guess.  RAWR!

4) I've finally gotten around to sorting my sea shells. Once they were all laid out, it seemed like there weren't as many as I thought I had collected.  Don't get me wrong, there are tons of them, but still.

Some of my shells!

One thing that always surprises me about seashells is how they are never as pretty once you bring them home.  They are still beautiful and everything, but they just don't look the same as they do when I pick them up. I happened to mention that to Aunt Brenda, and she said that there was a poem about that exact thing.  It's called "Each and All" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  The part she was talking about says:

The delicate shells lay on the shore;

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;

And the bellowing of the savage sea

Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar. 

So...thanks for harshing my mellow, Emerson.  No, I think I understand what he means.  The entire experience of something can lend a beauty to certain things that will disappear when you try to separate the elements of that experience.  Or something. I'm not good at poetry. 

If you read on in that poem, he says something kind of rude about his wife, too.  Emo turd.

Anyway, I've got to clean the shells and put them away.  I'm going to make some stuff with a few of them of them, but the rest will go into a new jar so I can look at the unsightly, noisome things.

5) Steve and I went to Rocket City Nerdcon this weekend.  It is sort of a tiny, tiny sci-fi/manga/gamer/comic convention that started last year and is held in our city's public library.  I didn't even know it was going on until Saturday morning, so on kind of a whim, we stopped by and walked through.  It was very modest, but still more crowded than I expected.  We didn't stop and listen to any of the panels.  Mainly, we just wandered around the vendor area and people watched.  There were some very impressive costumes!  We saw our friend Anthony over there, too!  He works for the library and was doing AV stuff for some of the panels.  I think I kind of scared him when I jumped on him with a violent hug from behind. (Pomegranate Banzai, Hug Ninja!)  I'm glad he isn't trained in martial arts.  He might have killed me.  We didn't stay long, but we had a great time!