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My parents got back from the hospital at half-past midnight last night. Lisa and I greeted them, packed up, and headed to her place. We arrived at close to two. I'd planned to head back home right away, but I sat down for a bit and realized how tired I was.

I napped with Lisa until nearly six, when I awoke, sobbing, from a nightmare. I can count the dreams in the last ten years that were bad enough to remember on the fingers of one hand, so I think I must be really stressed. Lisa, despite being three-quarters asleep, was a huge comfort.

I was scared to go outside after I'd packed up. I don't think that's ever happened before. I walked out the door of her apartment building and was shocked by the fabric-wrapped tree I'd looked at three other times that day, which had apparently turned into a giant person who wanted to assault me. The half-block walk to my car was anxiety-ridden, and after I got in the car and closed the door, I heard a sound that I instantly thought was someone pulling the passenger door handle, but there was no one there. (Nor, I might add, was there a bloody claw hanging from the handle when I arrived home....)

But I'm home now. My parents just went off to the hospital again so the eye doctor can check on my dad's progress. Turns out he has a scratch on his cornea and they want to see if the antibiotic is helping. I think that's a part, though not all, of last night's dream trigger. Though it didn't really shape the content.

Myself, I'm going to get a shower and put my brain back together. Maybe I'll work on my take home final, or my personal statement, or a resume/CV, or a poster abstract, or do some reading, or study for in-class finals, or try to figure my car out. Or maybe I'll go back to bed.

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Not that it happens often, but I'm going to begin to let people know the reason I unfriend/unfollow them in social media when I do so, if it's about something other than personal disagreement. If someone's position on issue(s) makes me too upset to engage in rational discussion about it, I can at least not take part in making making my position invisible by saying nothing.

At the same time, I think a private message is sufficient. Part of what's made me do these things silently in the past is thinking of newsgroups (yes, newsgroups; kids, ask your parents) where people left in a giant public huff of drama. That's really uncool. It's performative, not communicative. Deities know, we could use some more communication down here, which why I feel a little bad about withdrawing in the first place. But sometimes I just can't deal.

Update on my dad's situation

I here copy and paste an update from my dad's facebook account, for those interested in his status. He's using voice-to-text and is unable to see well enough to correct it. I'm leaving the typos (voice-os?) as is. (Though to be fair, though I love him very very much, he's not the world's best speller to begin with. *grins*)

So here is how things stand at this point
Somehow I've gotten a scratch on my cornea three and a half millimeters long by 2 millimeters wide. Doesn't sound like much but when you're talking about a night it's so nice scratch. So in order for it to heal I have to use can I drop every 2 hours but , and there's always a but the steroid drop I use for my cornea graft probably will interfere a lot with the scratch healing. So I've had to stop the steroid rap and use the antibiotic drops once every 2 hours. Without the store right old rap the graft in my corny I will get more inflamed. The more inflamed it is the less I can see as far as detail goes. So it pretty much sounds like I might be doing a tight rope walking act for a while. I'm going to make my third trip to Milwaukee tomorrow to see my surgeon and find out what he wants me to do.
So pretty much just another normal day. Please realize that I can't read the Facebook account on my computer. I am doing this from my phone. So any problems with the voice to text part should be blamed on Bill Gates or Isaac Asimov for gene Roddenberry I'm not sure which one. You can text my phone it's actually easier for me to see since I can get it about 3 inches away from my eye.

So I'm a bit worried about how that's going.

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My late term paper will not be accepted. She was nice about it, but it wasn't an emergency, so there it is. At least I'm in a position to retake the class in the Spring.

I think I'm done for the night. I'm going to play something mindless for a while and go to bed. I need to get up super early tomorrow so I can get a ride with my mother to school since I'm having knee pain that makes me hesitant to ride my bike.

Midwest Furfest 2002

I guess I'm supposed to post old pictures on Thursday; I fail at throwback.

This is a picture of me that is twelve years old now, from the first convention I ever went to on my own, without my parents. I spent all of Friday and Saturday at Midwest Furfest 2002 being painfully shy, taking photos of fursuiters, and talking to not a single person except for Dana Simpson. She's an artist from whom I bought an original hand-inked comic strip from Ozzie and Mille. When she wrote before the con about the possibility of selling originals, I emailed her ask her to bring a particular strip, which was a huge feat of bravery for me. I have that strip, now framed, on the wall over to my left.

On Sunday, I finally got up the nerve to approach one person whose name I recognized from lurking on Livejournal. Though him, I kind of got started in being an independently social creature in Chicago furry fandom, and from there, a social creature in general. Though the process was a long and slow one.

This fursuiter had servomotors in the ears that let them move into different expressions. I thought that was so awesome. I still do! I don't know who this was; I don't suppose any of my readers do?

At that point in my life, I knew various members of my parents' social circle who I still consider to be friends, but I had not a single friend who I'd met in person on my own. I recognize parts of myself in that person, but I don't know if he'd recognize me.

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Also, I shaved off my beard and mustache today. I don't honestly know why I did that. Truth be told, I think I look much better with. I guess I needed to change something. Of course, I'm just going to grow it back out.

Ok, I need to stop wasting time going in social media loops and go to bed. I've had a day to leave my brain in idle. Tomorrow, it's back to work!