And Another Year Passes

**Granted, as I type this my cat Eva is sitting in my lap, purring. I feel like an evil overlord as I pet her and write.**

So here I am again, I've made it through another year without dying, losing a limb, or initiating the apocalypse. Lots has happened, and more will continue to happen because no one lives in a sterile bubble. I've also learned quite a bit about myself, and had the emotional roller coaster ride that is living.  I won't go into everything; suffice it to say that I'm continuing my journey on figuring out who I am and what I need. Someday I'll have everything figured out... And then I'll die. ;)

Though, for those who are wondering how I passed the first day of my quarter century on this planet, I will give some details on that. I started the morning sneaking into work for a grand total of two minutes as I put out the folders my boss needed today (kind of forgot last night.... >.<), then had a leisurely breakfast interspersed with playing with makeup and teasing Eva. After breakfast and coffee I went up to Portland. My main purpose there as to hit my favorite shop in all the world, Powell's, and get my yearly book fix. First, though, I did what I had wanted to do for a while, but had procrastinated on:  I walked around downtown Portland like a silly tourist and played Ingress. That lasted until my phone hit about 25%, and then I finally meandered over to Powell's and started my nerd-gasm.

After spending way more on books than I meant (mostly because I grabbed more than were on my original list. But hey, I got a map of Portland as well. ^^), I settled down in the coffee shop and read for a while. As the activity in there picked up, I left, dropped my books off at my car (and got teased by the lot attendant), and went back to wandering. It's amazing what I found when I just walked. And by then the rain had stopped and the sun peaked through the clouds.  I stumbled upon a little garden area during my ramble, and stopped for a while to read.  If my phone hadn't been close to death, I would have stayed longer

Another year has passed. Change is in the air, and change has occurred. I may extend this blog (since I sorely neglected it over the summer).  If I do, I will post the updates when I can.  Thank you everyone who read and followed in my adventure. May you find ones that suit you as well.

Does She Live?

I know, I know, my original plan was to write in here at least twice a week. Now it's been close to a month since my last post, with nary an explanation as to why I've been silent.

The thing is, my character has been unusually active lately, to the point that I have to start investing in things like maps, white boards, and extra notebooks to keep pace with her... .Right up until she comes to a standstill because she is not sure where she goes next. I can't even begin to explain how much the story has changed, and how much she has, as well. I'm still hoping to get my first draft finished by the summer Solstice, but it means that I will be going out and about a bit less to meet my deadline.

I've been making quite a few changes in my diet and exercise routine, which has also contributed to me not wanting to sit in front of a computer for an extended period of time when I'm not at work, and since work requires my attention there.... 

In short, I do feel bad that I have not been writing as much. Between my own life shenanigans and the current events that I keep seeing (Net Neutrality, it's a thing.  Seriously, go Google it if you've been living in a cave to avoid the weather's insanity), writing this has taken a back seat. Hopefully I can get back to it when my first draft is finished. We shall see.

In other news, I rearranged my living room today. It's actually made it so all the furniture that was haphazardly strewn across the place with no real order now fits in a somewhat logical way. I still need to work on my desk, and figure out book shelves, but I can say that nothing is sitting in the middle of the room with no place to go.  There were some minor adventures while accomplishing this feat, because I managed to break something near where where the cable for my TV/Internet comes out of the wall. Took a few hours and a side trip which resulted in a new pair of shoes, but I got that fixed all by myself. =)

My car also broke down again. Apparently the bearings for the water pump were gone, and the water pump broke at the pulley. With luck, I got it fixed by an amazing mechanic I know from Ingress, and it's back to running again.

So, that, in a nutshell, has been my life over the past few weeks. I might not be making much noise on the social network sites, but I do still live!

Dreams

I will admit, I've started this post twice before, and deleted it each time, because by the time I sit down to actually write it, the dream that prompted the post has faded enough in my mind to the point where telling it no longer does me any good, because who wants to tell a story they can't remember?

There is one thing I can always remember about some of my weirder dreams. They always seem to take place in the house where the abuse occurred. The one that is prompting this post is no different. I could see the den area where one of the scenes took place, and it was like my parents had never moved from the house, down to the television that used to be down there, the game consoles their son has, and the futon people were sitting on. However, in this dream they had replaced the solid white front door with a thick, double paned glass door that opened like a screen door. This is important to remember later on.

There was a killer in our midst. By the time they had gained attention, they had already claimed one victim, a girl I had known in high school. All signs pointed to the killer being part of my video game community, but the problem was, they were skilled at keeping their nefarious activities under wraps. Things came to a head when the pillars of the community were at my house. We were in the basement; they were playing what might have been Smash brothers on the Super Nintendo (granted, this is a dream. I have no idea if there was a Smash brothers for Super Nintendo. My mind is weird.), and I kept trying to get them to listen to the fact that someone was dead, and all signs pointed to the killer being someone in our group. After multiple times of them not listening to me, I grabbed the cord and told them that if they wouldn't pay attention, I'd yank the power and cut their game. They told me I wouldn't, but I did. Even then, they didn't listen.

The series of events blurs here. At one point I had to jump off a building into a pool of water and swim for a bottle of wine that had fallen, all while still arguing about the fact that one of my friends was dead, and something needed to be done.

The next thing I know, I'm being followed back to my house by the killer. He has discovered that I'm onto him, and even though I had not deduced who he was, being tailed home after making a ruckus can bring out the paranoia in anyone. I park my car and sprint to the house, making sure to lock and deadbolt the front door, all the while cursing my parents for their bright idea of replacing the front door with a glass one. I go down the stairs to the basement and hide to the best of my ability, hoping that if the killer can't see me, that I'll be safe.

No such luck. The killer walked up to the door, messed with it for a few minutes, and opened the door. Not only had  my parents put on a new door, they had not made sure that the door would be secure. So, with the bravado and rage that my dream self expresses so well, I go up the stairs, yank the door back shut, and tell the killer I now know who he is, I know what he's up to, and I won't let him get away with it.

... And then I wake up.

This is not the first or the last time I will have a dream like this. In point of fact, I think the only span of time when I did not have these vivid and dark dreams was when I was in Italy. There my dreams were always that I was back in the States, and needed to get back to Italy for work.

So why am I engaging in a subconscious tell-all? Mostly, it's to help those closest to me understand. These are the gist of dreams I've had for as long as I can remember. I've had those flashes of dreams where it happens sometime down the road in real life, and that déjà vu feeling hits. I've also had a couple times where parts of dreams like the one I described above start happening in the real world. That's when the red alerts start sounding in my mind, and I will spend the next few days hyper aware of everything going on around me, because I don't know what parts of my dreams are going to manifest in real life. One of the times this happened, I had dreamed of being stalked by a serial killer, and so when parts of that dream started coming true...

Might sound crazy, but if a giant orange and yellow spider ever appears, I'm outta here.

On Modifying Goals

... And dealing with evolving stories.

The main story I've been working on for about the past year has yet to hit completion. On the one hand, there is a school of thought that says that this story will never reach completion, and I should abandon it to the next one that comes along. On the other, though, there is the school of thought that a good story can take a while to develop to a point where it is past the basic rough draft and actually hits something that could be considered readable.

The thing is, the story I'm working on deals with a character that I developed when I was fourteen years old. She is probably the only reason I made it through middle school. I forgot about her when I moved out of my parents house, but she came back to me last year. It all started while I was playing around with my brother's (the one I adopted, not the one biologically related to me) magazine, loading and unloading blanks to get the muscle memory developed in my hands in case I ever needed to load a magazine without looking. She came back to me then with an idea, and from there we have slowly developed her world, fleshing out who she is and why it is important, how she interacts in her universe, and why the events happening both to and around her matter in such a way to spell them out on paper (because I'm this weird chick who still writes most of her stories down in a notebooks, then transfers them to the computer. Some of this has to do with the fact that the first computer that belonged to me got corrupted, and I lost all my writing....). Her position without the universe has changed drastically, and as such an intricate back story has developed. The back story is what is causing my main delay in writing. I want to make sure the history of the position my character currently occupies is correct, and since it is still in its beginning stages, the motivations and actions of various entities are still getting revealed and explained.  Often these revelations occur at points when I can't stop everything and write, so I have to hope for the best.

People have asked why this particular character was born when she was, and why she's stayed with me for ten plus years.  It's a bit of a difficult thing to explain. The truth of the matter is, if my temperament had been just the tiniest bit different than it is, I think I would have become more like this character, and less like I am today. It probably sounds weird, and maybe a bit far-fetched to contemplate. And who knows, it might be. On the other hand, my character is better at setting boundaries than I am, and has a lower tolerance for people taking advantage of her than I do, so who knows.

I know that I have been rather silent that past couple weeks. I'm working on a multitude of things right now, including my stories, and unfortunately my blog suffers as a result. Hopefully I will have more time to write here in the future.  Hope everyone has been doing well, and is excited for spring!

My rant on the Five Love Languages

So, when I'm not hieing off for covert ops in the town I grew up in, fending off grumpy opposing attorneys, watching as the universe lays down its hand to show me that the deck was majorly stacked in its favor, or figuring out how to improve on the various activities in which I partake, I enjoy things like sitting down and reading a book that can open my horizons... Or, in some cases, 6 books more or less in the same time stretch. After the whole thing surrounding my birthday, I grabbed 6 books from my local library and and plunged head first into 3 of them. One of the books I grabbed is The Five Love Languages:  Singles Edition by Gary Chapman. One of my girlfriends had actually recommended the original (the author did not write the singles book first), and had explained about the theory within the book. I'll gloss over it, because I do agree with the idea of the five love languages. I do not agree with some of the other ideas the author touts, and it's those other ideas that prompted this piece.

First things first, the different love languages. According to Mr. Chapman, they are (in no particular order):

-words of affirmation

-touch

-gifts

-quality time

-acts of service

And all people can give and receive love in these five languages. Each person has different primary languages where they can give and receive love (for instance, I've found that I receive love from words of affirmation and quality time, while I tend to give in touch and acts of service). The author suggests that one of the best ways to keep a relationship going is to find your partner's primary love language, and make sure you express love in such a way that the other person can understand it. Now, this I can not only understand, I can get behind. It makes sense that different people experience love in different ways, and what can be giving love to one person can not affect another, even though the first person is speaking in their primary love language. I can see how that could make or break a relationship.

The first thing I read in that book that struck me as not only near-sighted, but in some cases just wrong was the idea that the only relationship that could really last was a monogamous relationship. Now, I know that quite a few people identify as monogamous, and are quite happy with just having one partner (I am one such person). However, "one size fits all" relationships don't work on the world at large. Hell, some of my best friends are quite happily polyamorous, and from what I've seen they've made it work. In multiple cases the author touts that "research indicates: 'monogamous individuals committed to one lifetime partner are the most physically and emotionally satisfied people sexually.'" He does not cite the studies he used to give this data, and he does not say when the research was published. As a critical thinker, this leads me to believe that the research being quoted has since been invalidated by new studies, or the studies used are rather out of date for the time and audience being addressed. Either way, something's hinky.

The second thing that bothered me (and ultimately made me stop reading the book until right before it was due. I actually could not finish it...) had something to do with "making the first move to repair any ruptures with your family".  In some cases, maybe. But in mine?  Hahahaha..... Right, no.

In short, the first half of the book that explains the love languages and how to determine what your partners love language is are rather accurate, and could possibly help with some relationships. The rest of it, though, severely detracted from the first part of the book. All in all, would only somewhat recommend. But if you're curious, go for it.

Brain dump for the week

-I will admit, I take things like astrological signs and personality types with a grain of salt. But when all three of them say more or less the same thing, they might have a good idea about my personality. Also, it's fun to say "I'm a Scorpio and a Snake, messing with me is just not a good idea."

-There are days I feel like I need a disclaimer.  Because it seems like no matter how often I explain that I will sometimes hermit myself away for no reason in particular, someone might feel ignored.  In short, I need a neon "It's not you, it's me" sign to hover behind me.  We can break the laws of physics right?

-Three cups of coffee on a Thursday night makes for a very weird Friday.

-Just because you don't get a response text from a person, doesn't mean they're ignoring you or not wanting to disclose information. Your phone is a POS, and doesn't always send texts.

-While it would be fun, I don't think I can justify getting another job abroad unless I'd be making bank...

-With the amount of stubbornness running through my veins, it's amazing that I ever ask anyone for help (see: I threw my back out Friday....)

-I don't think everyone realizes just how much I use deadpan for humor

-As long as I live in Salem, I will have to maintain a gym membership to stay active.

-It's not everyday that a person you knew in high school/college shows up as an FBI felon of the week.

-I flip tenses when talking to myself....

Anyway, hopefully next post will be more coherent. In the meantime, going to go lay down and stretch, because I really did throw my back out. Something about moving a 60 pound box up to my car, and into my apartment did not agree with my muscles.

A... Female rant

This week's topic:  Boobs, bras, and the fact that most women in the United States are not in their correct bra size.

First, let's take a look at a  map of the world

The map you saw shows the average cup size of women globally.  There's just one problem with that map... And that's America (surprise, surprise).  Why do I say this?  Well, here's an article about it.  Oh hey look, there's that map again...   

If you were to go into a Target, Kmart, Walmart, or even Victoria's Secret (the "end all, be all" of lingerie shopping...), the largest cup size you would find would either be a DD or DDD. And most of those would be in a 36, 38, or 40 band size. Even the department store JC Penney does not offer a cup size bigger than DDD in store. They do have more selection in their catalog on online. For the woman trying to get a proper fit, though, this does nothing to help.  But more on that later.

Moving on to Macy's and Nordstrom, they offer more cup sizes than those previously listed, but often the bras are not as... Pretty. Most often they could be described as plain, serviceable bras for everyday use. They're not cute, and they're not something that you would want to surprise a partner with.  Next we move to another lingerie store:  Fredericks of Hollywood. They get some points, because they offer a wider selection of cup sizes and band sizes, and don't automatically assume that D cups and above are going to have a large rib cage.

So, why is this so important?  Why should we care if a woman is sized correctly? Who cares if a woman's bra is too big in the band size and too small in the cup size so long as there are no lines?

Well, there are multiple reasons to care. A properly fitted bra can help a woman look up to ten (count 'em, 10) pounds lighter. A bra that fits right can reduce back strain, neck strain, core strain.... Lots of body strain. A proper bra can even make a woman feel sexy. *le gasp!* There are so many reasons to get properly fitted for a bra, and yet so many women don't.

So why is that?

Well, reread the list of places I listed. Quite a few of them are chains. Said chains do not offer a comprehensive selection of bras, much less an extended selection. Even Fredericks of Hollywood only goes up to 42G

Quick tangent for those of you who do not understand how a bra is sized/fit on a woman.  The numbers are the circumference of the woman's rib cage. The letter is the difference between the rib cage and the fullest part of the breast. Now, here's where things get tricky.  The United States, the UK, France, and other parts of Europe all use different ways to measure cup size (and France and Europe use centimeters instead of inches for band size).  The UK standard has been--in my experience, at least--the most logical of the sizing charts. They use the letter to designate inch differences, and as you traverse down the alphabet you get D, DD, E, F, FF, G, GG, H, I, J, etc.  These all designate an inch difference.

Now, contrary to popular belief, the smallest rib cage size is not 32. Rib cages can be much smaller. One girlfriend of mine has a 28 inch rib cage.  Just stop and think about that for a second...

Back to the main point, though. Without a comprehensive selection of bras for women available in the large stores, they turn to boutique shops to get a bra that actually fits and will give them the support they need to get through the day.  The drawbacks of the boutiques is the price of the bra.  I can easily spend $250 in a bra shop and maybe get 3 bras, if I'm lucky. I don't do online shopping, because each bra maker has minor differences in their bras.  So what one would call a 32GG another might call a 30H or a 34FF, and unless you have the exact bra design memorized and you are committed to wearing one style for the rest of your life (or until the manufacturer decides to stop making that bra)... You're stuck. You could spend hundreds of dollars on bras and try them on, find what fits, and send back what doesn't.  But that's a crapshoot...

So, the next time you go bra shopping or critique a woman's bra, just think about that.  We're dealing with what we have. The large suppliers don't believe in comprehensive sizes, and as a result many women will suffer.