nightbird tagged me for a meme, so I'm dustin' off the LJ to post it. :)

Rules: Leave me a comment. I will reply asking you to explain what 3 of your interests and 3 of your icons mean to you. Post your response in your journal and invite your friends to play along too.

Krissy asked about these three interests:
dr. spencer reid
lilo and stitch
rhoda

Dr. Spencer Reid: is my favorite character on Criminal Minds, an FBI/behavioral analysis procedural one-hour drama on CBS (Wednesdays at 9, if you'd like to watch). Reid is...I guess 26 by this point, and, well, a genius. He has an IQ of 187, an eidetic memory (he remembers everything he reads), and three Ph.D.s. As of now, they've never told you what Reid's degrees are in, but Scott and I think they're in psychology, law, and literature. I basically just love Reid because he's hugely geeky, and I'd like to kidnap him and make him my study-buddy.

Lilo and Stitch: is a Disney movie about a little Hawaiian girl named Lilo who adopts what she thinks is a dog, but turns out to be Experiment 626 from an alien planet - otherwise known as Stitch! :) I love Stitch like nobody's business. He's cute, he's sassy, he's blue...did I mention he's cute? My collection of Stitch stuff is getting a little out of hand; I have an animation cell from Disneyland, several Christmas ornaments, and too many stuffed animals, including a talking vampire-Stitch.

Rhoda: is Mary Richards' best friend on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but the interest actually refers to her spin-off show, Rhoda. It went on for a decently long time, and was actually pretty funny. It also stars Julie Kavner - otherwise known as the voice of Marge Simpson - as Rhoda's little sister Brenda. I'm still waiting for its release on DVD.

And she wanted to see these icons:


Bon Jovi - bitch please! Well. I do love Bon Jovi, but a lot of the icons out there are kind of cheesy-looking. This one cracked me up, mostly because I get this really funny image in my head of Jon Bon Jovi getting all Jack from Will & Grace and saying, "Bitch, PLEASE!" This is my pissed off, "You've gotta be freaking kidding me!" icon.


This is Elphaba, from Wicked, which is a musical about "the untold story of the witches of Oz," and kind of gives the backstory to Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West before Dorothy dropped in. Seriously, it totally changes your watching of the original Wizard of Oz. Anyway, the big song from the musical, and the close of the first act, is called "Defying Gravity" - lyrics here. This is my inspirational/hopeful/I can do anything icon.


Ohhh, Bellatrix Lestrange. She's from Harry Potter, and is Sirius Black's not-so-vaguely unhinged cousin. I always loved Bella in the books, despite (or perhaps because of), her inherent evilness, and Helena Bonham Carter's portrayal of her in the Order of the Phoenix movie just sealed the deal. She's so fantastically evil. This is my default icon these days.

Who's next? :)

I have three standard Vox invites if anyone wants 'em.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
My oh my, what a wonderful day!
Plenty of Disney comin' my way!
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!

Starting tomorrow, June 17th, I'll be away until June 24th. Where will I be, you ask? I'll be in Anaheim, California, soakin' up the sun and frolicking in Disneyland. See you all when I get back! :)

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay,
Wonderful feeling, wonderful day!

Since it's so close. :) Stolen from lothlorienlover.

1. Pick your birth month
2. Strike out anything that doesn't apply to you.
3. Bold five-ten that best apply to you.
4. Copy to your own journal, with all twelve months under a lj-cut.

MAY:
Stubborn and hard-hearted. Strong-willed and highly motivated. Sharp thoughts. Easily angered. Attracts others and loves attention. Deep feelings. Beautiful physically and mentally. Firm Standpoint. Needs no motivation. Easily consoled. Systematic (left brain). Loves to dream. Strong clairvoyance. Understanding. Sickness usually in the ear and neck. Good imagination. Good physical. Weak breathing. Loves literature and the arts. Loves traveling. Dislike being at home. Restless. Not having many children. Hardworking. High spirited. Spendthrift.

( The )

That was pretty accurate, actually.

Quick post because I have no internet at home, so I'm on campus for five minutes waiting for Scott. But...

I GOT INTO COLUMBIA'S MASTER'S PROGRAM! I'M GOING TO COLUMBIA FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL! AAHHHHHH!

Better post tomorrow between classes. :)

My Valentine's yarn order from Knitpicks came! They were lightning fast - we ordered the yarn on Tuesday at, like, midnight, and it showed up at Scott's dorm today before I left for home.

I also have progress pictures to show you, so ( I'll cut straight to the photos )

I'm jumpin' on the bandwagon. :)

http://kevan.org/johari?view=wingedorange

Bad news: I was rejected from Loyola's Psy.D. program.

Good news: I was invited to resubmit my application (at no extra charge) for consideration into the Loyola terminal MS in Clinical Psych (practitioner track), which feeds into the Psy.D. program at the end of the terminal masters.

More good news: I GOT AN INTERVIEW! For the Mass. School of Professional Psych in Dedham! I'm going to the Boston area...March 4.

Just wanted to share. :)

So tonight was the TCNJ winter formal. I'll just show you the good shots, okay?

( Oooh! Pictures! )

So. After all those years of joking that I don't cook because I'm liable to catch something on fire, it finally happened.

I was cooking flour chicken (now, Jess, you've helped me successfully cook this once before!), and was at the stage where you boil the oil. When the oil began to pop, I turned the heat down, just like you're supposed to. The oil, however, began to smoke. I turned the heat off. As soon as I clicked the knob to "off" - I shit you not - the whole pot freaking ignited! In flames. WHOOSH!

Scott and I stared at it for a second and then I began to yell frantically, "Get the fire extinguisher! It's in the drawer of the thing!" "WHAT?!" "Nevermind! I'll get it!" I have never moved so fast in all my 21 years. When I first went to college, Marty's mom had given me a hamper full of stuff, including a mallet and a small all-purpose fire extinguisher. I looked at her and went, "Tara, what the HELL am I going to do with this stuff?!" Well, man, tonight I was glad that a.) I had the fire extinguisher and b.) I remembered that I had it. I couldn't figure out how to use it, so I gave it to Scott, who expertly put out the flames (which had grown, mind you - there was smoke dust on our top cabinets. Ten seconds more and the ceiling would have ignited), as well as dousing Michelle's brownies.

Sweet jesus. Took us half an hour to scrub the smoke-char off of everything, not to mention to air out the apartment. Thank god we got everything put out, though - THAT would have been horrible.

Scott = hero of the night.

But yeah...who else finds it even remotely amusing that I did indeed set fire to something I was cooking?

Tagged, sort of, by nightbird. (Well, hey, she said anybody that wants to do it!)

Post your five guilty pleasures, then tag five other people.

1. Keeping one of nightbird's answers: Harry Potter fanfiction. Except my favorite ship is Sirius/Remus - which I guess could be construed as a second guilty pleasure. I like tasteful slash. :)
2. Pokemon. I love Pokemon games. :) Gold/Silver were my favorites.
3. Craft kits. I buy lots of craft kits without the time to finish them, but I like just looking at the contents of the packages.
4. Nickelodeon cartoons. I love Fairly Oddparents, Danny Phantom, and As Told By Ginger.
5. Reruns of The Division, which are on at 1:30 AM.

Tagging...anyone that wants it, because I'm not even sure if five people READ my LJ. ;)

I took Lori back to Dr. Magazu today for her feather picking. He looked at her skin, did a Gram stain and some blood tests, and determined that her picking is indeed obsessive behavior. She doesn't have a skin infection like mites, but some of her feather shafts are infected because she's got "beak holes" in them. He gave me a big bottle of Clomicalm for her, which is the birdie equivalent of prozac, and told me not to start it until he gets all of her bloodwork back to make sure her liver's functioning normally. The vet said that the medicine might make her "pretty serene and sleepy" for the first couple of weeks. Tranquil birdie! Apparently Clomical works the same way for birds as prozac does for people: it can take a while to find the right dose. I do have to call Dr. Magazu back, though; I have a couple of questions about her meds. Which reminds me, when I take Lori back for her last wing/beak/nail trim before we move, I need to get our vet to make recommendations for me if he can for whatever area we're moving to. I'm really sad to have to leave our vet; I like him a lot. And he calls Lori "sweetcakes". ;)

I feel kind of bad for her - he couldn't get enough blood from the vein in her ankle, so he had to draw from under her wing too. Poor girl's got a big bruise under her little wingy, and her one foot is all purple. She's eating right now, but she's also scowling at me. Very angry bird.

My money situation seems to have worked itself out. It was $180 for Lori's visit, bloodwork, and first huge bottle of Clomical. After trying on dresses EVERYWHERE, including bridal dresses from David's Bridal's $99 sale, and not finding anything that either fit properly or wouldn't cost me a mint to have altered, I wound up trying on and borrowing one of Lizz's old prom dresses. Fits great, looks fantastic. I just need it hemmed, which will only be about $30. I only need one book for next semester that's $113 at our B&N bookstore, but I'm going to see if I can order it through the Borders bookstore at the mall, which will bring it down to $91. And if I can do that, I can use my mom's $50 mall gift card, effectively making my book $41. Good deal. :)

And to top it off, my iSkin finally came, so tonight it's back to loading music onto the iPod while I either cross-stitch (I found these adorable penguin ornament things on sale for $10 at A.C. Moore; they're going to be Scott's and my first holiday decorations for our apartment) or work on my honors thesis (which I REALLY don't wanna do).

So I woke up this morning to check my email and checked my unofficial transcript to see if my final grade had come in. And this is what I saw:



Oh, who's good? I haven't had Straight A's since I was in elementary school. Take THAT, grad school admissions committees!

Despite being sick and having a nasty case of laryngitis (and a horrible cough), I had a great Christmas. Even my grandparents were civil - at least, until dinner, but they always start getting ornery about then. Christmas was pretty laid-back this year. We all got up around 8, my brother's doing - even at 17, he's still a raw nerve when it comes to Christmas. It's fine for my parents; they're up anyway. But some of us like to sleep in, ya know? Mrf. :P My grandparents weren't due to arrive until about 9, so we opened a couple of presents and then congregated in the kitchen to hover while my dad cooks breakfast. Christmas is the one day a year he cooks - he makes homemade waffles, bacon, sausage, eggs...all breakfast favorites. I passed on the sausage and eggs and had a hefty helping of Belgian waffles and more bacon than is probably healthy for 21-year-old arteries. ;)

( Cut as I ramble on )

...and all through the place, a young girl was stirring, a worried look on her face.

So. It's a couple of days before Christmas. Not everything is wrapped, but that is not a problem. That will get done.

Not all my Christmas knitting is done. Actually, scratch that - NONE of my Christmas knitting is done. This is sort of not a problem. Everyone has actual gifts, and Mom's scarf will get done eventually. She's the only one that really cares about her knitted gift anyway, I think.

Lori has four or so days remaining on her baytril. Her cold has cleared up - no more sneezing, no more gunky beak. She's feeling well enough to give me a hard time about everything and make catching her that much harder. But she's still picking her damned feathers! She's not pulling them out, far as I can see, and she's certainly not screaming when she does it anymore. The frequency of the picking has lessened somewhat, but she's still really digging at one spot on her back. When she moves a certain way, you can see that it's definitely bald. This is not only a problem, it's a BIG PROBLEM.

I'm going to wait until she's finished her antibiotic, as suggested, and give her a couple of days after that. If she's still picking by, say, the 28th (she'll finish her baytril on the 26th), I'm calling the vet. My personal theory is that because the picking has lessened, and because the vet told me that the skin damage looked trauma-related (meaning it was most likely caused by her own scratching and not a skin disease) and that picking can become a compulsive behavior, that it's a behavioral issue as opposed to a medical one. I'm hoping my vet will agree, because there's the threat of that $300 battery of tests looming at me. I recently got a check from my last payperiod at school - $271. That would cover most of it, assuming that figure also takes into account the actual $45 vet visit itself. I'll get my baby birdie the tests if she needs them, but...my god, that's going to break me. It's going to be even worse if she needs more medication, because if it's something so specific that it needs a blood test to be diagnosed, chances are the meds will be royally expensive. Scott's been offering to help if I need it, and I've been telling him not to be silly, but I may need to take him up on it. I appreciate the offer - he and Lori haven't quite seen eye to eye yet, which is unfortunate, because she's going to be living with us next year, so she needs to get used to him and having to split my attention and affection with him.

Everyone I know wonders why I'm so frugal with my money. I always say, "I save it in case I need it for something!" "What could you possibly need that much money for?!" Well, this is it. I've had two sick pets this year, and vet care is not cheap. Really makes me wish that pet insurance was standard issue (or at least, not so friggin' expensive), because I'd be much better off if I had a copay or something.

As a side thing, I also need a dress for the TCNJ formal and that'll run me about $100 - probably more, but I'm trying to avoid paying through the nose for a dress I will wear for five hours. My aunt's been promising me money for a while, but she's shady on those kind of promises, so we'll see. I'm starting to be sorry I wanted to go to the formal in the first place, because looking for a dress depressed the hell out of me. I'm too busty and slightly too fat for juniors dresses, the plus sizes fit my bust but don't fit me anyplace else, and the misses dresses are just...scary. I've found a couple of bridesmaid's dresses that would fit, but they're about $180, which is so amazingly out of my price range. By the end of the day, I wound up feeling fat and discouraged. But unfortunately, we've already bought the tickets, so there's no backing out now. :P Compared to the bird, though, this is a minor issue and truly, it's a secondary expense.

I shouldn't be this bummed out a few days before Christmas, and I'm trying not to let it get to me because the holidays are a happy time and everything will sort itself out eventually. But anymore, anything involving money is a touchy subject for me, and with all the expenses that have come up, it makes me nervous. Even at absolute worst, I'll start the spring semester with somewhere between $300 and $500 (which sounds like next to nothing to me). It's not much, but it allows me to spend $100 on the dress and, more importantly, about $400 on Lori if I absolutely have to, maybe a little extra. It'd be enough to hold me over until my first paycheck comes in, and with my new job, I'll be making about $320 every two weeks. In light of our impending move, it makes me nervous to have my cashflow drop that dramatically and have to make it up, but Scott's got a lead on some possible employment after graduation, so maybe we'll be okay.

So long story short, what I want for Christmas this year is for Lori to not have some horrible medical condition that will make her miserable and itchy. What's your big Christmas/holiday wish?

Quick update at the start of my winter break.

The Good:
- I'm home! It's winter break!
- Scott gave me my Christmas present early, despite my attempts to protest. He got me my own copy of World of Warcraft, so I can play without having to play off my brother's account. Because of the rebate deal that's going on, he actually got it for $20, and for some reason (maybe because my account was originally a guest pass account), my first month of gameplay is free. Huzzah!
- I may not be working over the break. Which is good in a way, because I need a damn rest.
- Christmas is a week away!

The Bad:
- Scott left tonight to finish his finals and go home for Christmas with his family, so I won't see him for a while. :( I always miss him when he's gone. We'll be together for Christmas next year, though. :)
- Lori. I'm giving her her baytril, but I feel so evil. She hates it. She hates being picked up, she hates the medicine...she won't speak to me anymore and it's like pulling teeth to get her out of her cage. Our vet also told me I need to switch her over to pelleted food, so she's going to be miserable while we go through THAT process, too. :P She's been on the baytril for six out of fourteen days, and she's still picking her feathers a bit, although I can see some of what might be normal preening. At least she's stopped screaming like she's in pain. Although, her nose still looks gunky (but not red and inflamed anymore), and she's still sneezing a little. She also fluffs and shivers every so often, but that might be part of the plucking - it screws with their temperature regulation. Krissy, when Bink was on the baytril, how long before you saw improvement? On the one hand, I want to ride it out and see how she goes for the remaining eight days, but on the other hand, I don't want to risk it, especially not after having lost Snitch. I may call the vet tomorrow and see what they think I should be watching for. I'm just vaguely afraid I'm going to need to bring her in for tests, which the vet told me would be about $300. ACK.
- In light of that, potentially not working becomes a Bad Thing.
- The week before Thanksgiving, one of my molars broke. I ran home to get it filled. Now the week before Christmas, the filling fell out. Urg.

The Ugly:
- Christmas is a week away and my gift knitting's not finished! (Gee, big shock there.)
- I have grad school applications due by Jan. 1. ACK!

And there you have it.

EDITED:
Just heard from the vet...he thinks Lori's recovering just fine, and that mostly what she's suffering from right now is a case of high pissivity with being picked up and poked at. :) He said basically just watch her and finish the antibiotic, but she'll probably be fine. Yay!

Almost made it out of here for the semester relatively unharmed. Note the "almost".

I'm exhausted. End of the semester stuff is piling up, which makes me laugh, because I have one final and one final paper to finish up. I knew that whole "having free time" thing would come back to bite me. ;)

I have my History of Jazz final on Friday at 8 AM. Between now and then, I need to study for the aforementioned final and edit and print my 30-page development paper, which is probably going to be harder than it sounds - last night I went to print up copies of my second-semester thesis proposal and my internship proposal so they could be signed and distributed for review. Three copies of each. Fine. Except every computer on this campus (12 in the library, and four in the psych building) had had its printers uninstalled for some crazy reason, so I was up at nine this morning running around to copy my proposals and get them signed, because one of the professors I needed a signature from was leaving after the 10:00 department meeting. UGH.

Add to that the fact that I went home yesterday to take Lori to the vet. She's been itching at her feathers lately and it looked like it hurt her, so off to the vet we went. Nothing's seriously wrong with her, apparently; the vet says she just has a cold. Not TOO bad. Except that she needs cherry-flavored baytril syringed down her little birdie throat twice a day for fourteen days. Now, in order to do this, you have to pick up the bird, which is a hell of a lot harder than it sounds. I know for a fact that nightbird had to do this with her cockatiel Bink a while back, and she basically told me that trying to get a cockatiel to take medication is one giant fight. Krissy, you weren't kidding! She screams blue bloody murder when I come after her with the paper towel to pick her up and give her her meds. Poor thing; she probably thinks I hate her. My mom is being a saint and giving Lori her baytril for the next few days so I can finish up the semester-end stuff here (closeout for work, meeting for research, 8 AM final...), and naturally, she was wonderful for her. I feel kind of bad irritating her so much, but assuming she responds to the baytril, she'll quit sneezing (which apparently she's been doing, because one side of her little birdie nose is all red and inflamed), it'll make her throat stop hurting, and she'll quit itching her feathers all the time. I also need to switch her over to pelleted food, so she'll hate me for that too, but eventually she will get over it. ;)

Oh. And as a final stressor, my Christmas knitting is nowhere near done. That's because I'm delusional and undertook WAY too much there. But I have...roughly 11 days left, so we'll see where that goes. Right now, though, I'm going to take a nap and then maybe catch up on some of that knitting.

OH! Lloyd, if you're reading this - did you get my Christmas box email? :)

Eeee! I just love Christmas. I wasn't in much of a Christmas-y mood last year, but that was a circumstantial issue. This year the Christmas mood is back with a vengeance. I've been driving Scott nuts, I think. Two stations out of the Philly area (104.5 and 101.1, if anyone's in the area and wants to listen) are playing nothing but Christmas music, from Thanksgiving until Christmas. So now any time I get in a car, I yell, "CHRISTMAS MUSIC!" and dive-bomb the radio. It's really very sad. I also brought back a ton of Christmas movies: the Garfield and Peanuts Christmas specials, The Santa Clause (the first one. I pretend the second one never happened), A Muppet Christmas Carol, and A Very Muppet Christmas. I have Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer someplace too. I love the holidays. :)

This is random, but holiday-related. Has anyone else heard "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas"? It's one of my top three Christmas songs because it's adorable and sounds very much like something I'd say, but they very rarely play it on the radio. Scott didn't believe it was real; he thought I made it up until he downloaded it. I just wanted to put that out there. ;)

And on a totally unholiday-related note (except that I'm listening to a Bon Jovi Christmas song and that reminded me), last night was the ( Bon Jovi concert in Philly )

And now back on the holiday tangent...I have mad Christmas knitting to do. It started off with one scarf for my mom. And then it became a scarf for Mom and fuzzy feet for Alex. And then I added a pair of thrummed mittens for my dad to use with his new snowblower...and then a double-knit hat for Scott to match his RENT scarf...and it keeps growing. This is mildly ridiculous and it's almost a certainty that I won't get it done on time, but dammit, we're going to see. ;)

Happy Holidays everyone!