ONE:



Trentus42: Not bad, not bad. Your tone is still a bit too full though. Really tighten up that throat and be sure to breathe from the chest. And don't be afraid to bite down on the reed every now and then.

ChapmaniacPictures: @Trentus42 Feedback from master ear-drum splitters is always appreciated. I have regressed in leaps and bounds since uploading this video. For example, I now exclusively use broken reeds and play them back to front.

(i think i laughed harder at this one, tbh; there's something about the end that kills me every time)


TWO:
THIS COMIC OMG how have i never seen this before



( MORE nsfw COMICS )

When I was in fourth or fifth grade (about ten years old), I spent a lot of time in my elementary school's library. I'm sure it would be almost comically tiny now—formative memories always seem to shrink a bit with age—but back then, that library might as well have been four stories high for how many worlds as it introduced me to. I found Redwall there, and Narnia, and Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, and a hundred other places and heroes that stayed with me and shaped me, becoming as much a part of my world as some school friends I had for how real they were.

And if you went in through the main doors and turned left, past the check-out desk and the miniscule reference section that nobody ever used, there was a single floor-to-ceiling bookcase set cattycorner to the others that had that month's featured books in it, and that was where I found The Riddle-Master of Hed. It wasn't even supposed to be there—that bookcase was for new additions to the school's collection and for required reading, and the library's copy of Riddle-Master was obviously old, made of that weird waxy binding that all those old library books seem to be covered in, the stuff that cracked the first time you picked it up and after a few months became so discolored that you couldn't even tell what the picture on the front was supposed to be. But I could read the title—The Riddle-Master of Hed, by Patricia McKillip—and I liked the first page well enough, and even then I was so desperate for any kind of fantasy that I would have tried it even if it'd been missing every third page.

I don't remember most of my reactions to the book, or to its two sequels that I found properly shelved in the dusty fantasy section they belonged in. I do remember loving the series, even then, and adoring Raederle and Morgon and Deth, and finding the prose a bit difficult to get through—I distinctly remember not understanding some scenes altogether—but pretty. But the Internet didn't exist back then, and it wasn't Riddle-Master I found in the major bookstores when I went in clutching my allowance, so when I moved on to middle school I took Redwall and Narnia with me, and somehow Morgon of Hed just got...left behind.

( Read more... )

BIOWARE FIC CONTEST ENTRY FINISHED. I really like how it came out! Too bad it utterly fails to adhere to the prompt, sob. Also, it turns out that the spirits and demons of the Fade are basically angels in my head, at least as far as their relationship to the Maker is concerned and how they view humans/elves. IT WORKS I SWEAR.

Also, class starts tomorrow, and it feels really weird not getting ready for another semester. I have a meeting with my academic advisor this week to determine what I'm going to do for the spring; once summer starts, I'll be auditing the classes the next class down are taking, and pharm starts again in the fall. Goodness, I'm tired of school.

and HERE is a POST about the Christmas party Jasper and I threw!


WE HAD ONE.
ft. a roommate, JASPER; a hostess, QUARK; a puppy, HAMLET.
also ft. JASPER'S PARENTS; JASPER'S FIANCE; QUARK'S PARENTS; QUARK'S BROTHER & his FIANCEE

THE DECORATIONS WERE FESTIVE
    

THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS
        
and sorry, I apparently did not take a single picture of anything we actually served, but the menu from start to finish was:

( menu )
the apartment was PACKED
(seriously it was, we fed nine (9) people and a puppy in our two-person apartment)
        

THE PUPPY WAS ADORABLE and bitey
        

And as all good Christmas parties should end, we finished with a wreck of an apartment and guests so stuffed that they had to waddle out to their cars.
        

        

AND if anybody's interested, I do have pictures from when we took Hamlet to the Christmas tree farm and stuck him in those photo op face-cut-out things for kids. If, you know, the internet wants puppy photos of all things.

Merry Christmas!

Oh, you guys, you guys. You all are just--the most amazing people, and I love you so much. I can't thank you enough for that wonderful post y'all left me and as soon as I can, I'm going to go through and comment properly but first, I wanted to let you know why I haven't been around much lately.

For those of y'all who are newer and might not know (welcome, by the way! I promise I am not usually this...dolorous), I'm a second year in optometry school. This past semester I had a class called Ocular Pharmacology, and it was, without hyperbole, the most difficult class I have ever taken. And the long and short of it is--I failed the class.

I didn't mean to go so long without posting either, honestly--it just ended up that that class pretty much took over my life, and every time I sat down to type anything it always came out "I'm really worried about this one class" and it just never seemed worth detailing how hard it was (really freakin hard) until I had a final grade. Which, as I mentioned before, ended up being an F. The worst part is that I actually passed the final! I just did so badly on the midterm and two of her Quests ("not a quiz, not a test--quest!" urgh) that it was unrecoverable.

And it's just...really, really frustrating. I went to study groups; I went to the extra sessions she offered at 7:00 in the morning; I emailed her multiple times for meetings and every time there was some reason she couldn't meet. And in the end, I still failed the damn class.

Basically, what this means that I'm going to have to repeat second year. Not all of it, thank God, but I'm required to pass pharm before advancing to year three, and it's not offered again until next August. So I have to sit on my heels until then, and at that point I'll drop back and join the class of 2015.

HOWEVER. I have been doing my level best to find bright sides to this situation since I found out about it Tuesday morning. What I've come up with so far is:

• I get to be in class with my friend Rachel again
• I have been feeling pretty burnt out lately, and maybe this break will give me a chance to get my head back into the whole school mindset
• maybe the failing grade will inspire me to do better in my other classes
• I'm still not as bad as another girl I know who's failed out of two years and is now with the class of 2015 instead of 2013

those--those are legit goals, right

Anyway, I'm better now than I've been this week, but that's because aside from all this pharm stuff, this week has been one of the worst of my life. Not only was it finals week, which always carries its own stress, here are the other things that have happened:

had to make up two failing portions of my final practical, nearly failed the CEVS final, found out I failed one of the makeup portions of my practical and therefore had to make it up again, burst into tears during the makeup makeup because I'd just found out about pharm and the professor grading me asked how my other classes were going, had to tell two of my closest friends in the class that I wouldn't be coming back to join them in the spring, got pulled over for speeding after a study group the night before my last practical (65 in a 40, 1:00 in the morning, nobody was around and I'd nearly missed my turn onto my street because they turn off the stoplights at night and I wasn't used to the blinking yellow even though I've lived here for over a year), and the next day, got stuck behind an accident on my way home from school and took almost an hour to go a little over two miles.

It...look, it has just not been a good week.

THAT SAID, here are some good things that I am trying to focus on!

• the officer who pulled me over was kind enough to let me go with only a warning, although that might have been due in part to the utterly uncontrollable tears I burst into when he came back with my license and insurance card;
• my roommate and I are hosting a legit Christmas dinner party tomorrow for nine people, and even though I have no idea where we're going to put everyone we've got a ham in the fridge and a crockpot full of hot chocolate, and if you've got those things I figure it can't go too badly;
• my shopping is done and the presents are all wrapped and under the tree, and my roommate and I are going to sit down and watch It's A Wonderful Life together here as soon as I post this;
• there's a puppy sitting on my feet and I'm healthy, warm, and surrounded by people who love me.

Yeah, this sucks. But life could be a whole lot worse.

because she hasn't posted in a while and she's totally awesome and deserves one.


( CUT SO YOU CAN SKIP STRAIGHT TO THE COMMENTING PART )




also Quark you should just go back and look at this post. Remember this post? Here I remind you:








♥

I got a review today and I don't know what to do with it.

( Am I seriously still this fragile? After ten years on the internet? )

Also, I lol every single time I see this picture. This is what happens when you only practice on one eye after class. Plus, one of the lenses popped out of my cheapo readers this morning, and man if it wasn't the right one for the job. Quark, turning misfortune into GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY.

and it is going to be all about how bummed I am right now because Jade's at a play and nobody else is answering their phones HIKKI so if you would prefer to read a post about happy things instead or are harboring any lingering thoughts of "gosh why doesn't she just tell us what's going on instead of going all blowhard-y about how bummed she is," please allow me to gift you with this token of my appreciation.

I kid. Ha ha ha!

Here are the things that have gone poorly in the last five days!

oh Hikki has called me back but you know what, I'm going to dump on you anyway

1) my plans for tonight fell through. Way back before fall break, a bunch of girls in my class were planning on going to Sips and Strokes here in Birmingham together. If you've never heard of it, from their website: "Bring your favorite beverage and paint a picture along with Wendy LoVoy or one of her instructors as they show you step-by-step how to paint a beautiful masterpiece that you will take home at the end of the evening." There's a whole bunch of pictures you can sign up for; tonight's was going to be an owl. I've done it before and it was a lot of fun, and I was really looking forward to going with the rest of the people from my class since I don't get to hang out with them very often. Plus I really enjoy painting?

Well, exams came upon us and we ended up pushing it to tonight instead of the original date, and the girl who was kind of coordinating it told us that since our group of 8 or 10 or whatever didn't meet the required minimum of 15, she couldn't register for all of us and we needed to do it ourselves. Well, long story short: I didn't end up registering before the class was full, but the manager I called to ask about it was like, "people don't show up all the time! Just go and try to get in, and if somebody doesn't show, you can have their place no problem!"

GUESS WHAT: everybody showed. The room was packed when I got there and everybody was having their awesome fun times, and I barely got to say hi to my classmates before I got to the front of the line and the woman was like, "nope, sorry! no seats left!" and I had to walk back out again. And I couldn't even be RIGHTEOUSLY INDIGNANT about it because it's my own dadgum fault for not remembering to register sooner, but I'd been looking forward to this for weeks and I didn't get to do it and WOE I AM STILL UPSET.


2) My scheduled time and professor for Primary Care. Each semester, our class is divided into small groups that are then assigned a certain morning or afternoon to spend in the primary eye care clinic downstairs. We see patients along with the fourth years, do preliminary testing, scribe, or run whatever errands need to be run during the exams. Last half-semester, my group went on Tuesday mornings 8-12 and had Dr. Fleming, who was awesome and didn't believe in keeping students waiting around if their work was completed; this half-semester I have FRIDAY FRICKIN AFTERNOONS from 1-5 and frickin DR. PERRY who doesn't believe in letting anyone leave if someone else is not done. It didn't matter that between my fourth year and me, we got done with all our patients by 4:40 and literally had nothing else to do; both of us had to sit in the intern room for FORTY MINUTES while we waited for the other two fourth-years and my other second-year friends to finish their exams. The class technically ends at 4:50; he did not let us even LEAVE the intern room until 5:20, and then we all had to go upstairs and put our equipment away and hang up our white coats and I did not even leave the school until 5:45.



The only bright spot in this entire afternoon was that I got to do all my prelims (VAs @ dist/near, cover test, EOMs, pupils & APDs, confrontation fields, and retinoscopy) AND both precorneal slit lamp and Goldmann tonometry on a real patient instead of just one of my classmates. That said, I think I would have preferred giving up half of those and getting out on fricking time instead.

( More? More. )

Do you know what I got for it?





Yes. Ichiruki. Ice skating together.

( I made gifs. That's what I think about this episode. )