Random Babble

Writer's Block: Close Call

Thu, 21 May 2009 20:50:12 GMT

Accidents happen all the time, and often we walk away miraculously uninjured. What has been your closest call with avoiding serious harm in an accident?

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Well, I guess it would be the thus-far only serious accident I have been involved in (knock on wood). I was 18 and it was 2 days before I was to move to the city for my first year of university. I had been out with friends to say goodbye, and it was 5 a.m. by the time I got into my car to drive home. NOTE: I'm a teetotaller, always have been, so there was no alcohol in my system. Anyway, I was driving too fast on a freshly-graveled country road, anxious to get home before my parents woke to find me still gone (not that I'd get into trouble, but they would worry). My tire caught on a ridge of gravel, the car swerved one way, I overcorrected and it swung the other way. My back wheels slid into the ditch, whipped my car around and rolled it completely over once, landing upright at the bottom of the ditch, facing back the way I'd come.

I sat there momentarily, then reached forward and shut off the car. I tried to remove the keys, but couldn't (realized later this was because I had forgotten to put the car in "Park") I took a breath, looked around and thought, 'okay, what do I need?' I grabbed my bag, which had my wallet, cds, cellphone, etc. in it, then, since it was dark out, figured I should find the flashlight I kept in the car. I reached down and picked something up, but it turned out to be the rearview mirror, which had apparently fallen off in the roll. I put it back down and looked into the backseat. The flashlight was sitting in the middle of the backseat amongst grass and broken glass from the shattered back window. I picked it up, got out of the car, looked around and decided to walk. As I climbed the side of the ditch back onto the road, I heard coyotes howling somewhere in the darkness. Great.

I checked my cell; no service, of course. I started walking. I knew where I was and was going to walk to the nearest farmhouse, which happened to belong to a family friend, to use their phone. Failing that, I knew my mother had to work in town at 7 that morning, and so would be coming up the road in an hour or so anyway. I could flag her down. So I started walking, alternating between talking out what had just happened to myself and cursing at my useless cellphone. As I reached the farmyard, I started to feel relief, until the pair of large dogs started barking out warnings. I stopped, realizing that since I hadn't been to visit this farm in years the dogs were more likely to attack me than be friendly. Deciding that being mauled by dogs wasn't something I needed to add to the night's list of problems, I turned back to the main road and continued walking.

As I walked, the cows in the pasture by the road started following alongside me, prompting to bull in the opposite pasture to start bawling loudly at them. I started laughing at the ridiculousness of it, and that's when I noticed that the only apparent injury I'd received in the roll was a broken thumbnail, which made me laugh harder. "I rolled my car and broke a NAIL!" A few minutes later, I realized that, instead of turning back onto the main road as I'd thought, I'd gone straight, and was now at a farmyard I didn't recognize. Conceding defeat, I approached the house and knocked on the door. The farmer answered in his pajamas, it was only about 5:30 by then. I explained that I'd been in an accident, and could I use his phone? I called my parents, first assuring them that I was fine before explaining what had happened. They arrived about 15 minutes later to take me home. While I waited, the farmer told me that this was the same house my sister had come to to phone home when she rolled her truck, a few years earlier.

Anyway, after getting home (and not sleeping as my mom wanted to make sure I didn't have a concussion first), going back to the accident site to meet with a police officer (the passenger side of the car was crunched a bit, wordlessly indicating that it was a good thing that, empty, side had taken the brunt of the roll), and going into town to give a statement, it was all over. I went home, spent the day packing, got little sleep the next two nights, and had to deal with moving into a new city and figuring out the layout of the university the day after. Which was horrible, but at least I made it there.

My only injuries were the aforementioned broken thumbnail, and a bruise by my right eye (likely the rearview mirror had conked me when it fell off during the roll).

So, perhaps not a bad enough accident that my walking away was miraculous, but I'm certain I was lucky to have such hugely minor injuries anyway. Not an experience I'm eager to repeat, at any rate.

Corrections and Stress Levels

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:00:44 GMT

So I lied last time. Since I've started checking out his other stuff and watching interviews and suchlike, I've discovered my inner JEH fangirl. The man is adorable and awesome no matter what he's doing.

Also, finals this term are out to kill me, I swear. I write exams Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Monday. I wrote one yesterday as well, but it was the easiest one. 100 multiple choice, purely factual recall. Oh, how I've missed such exams. The rest unfortunately, are essay-answer types.

Still have no idea how I'm moving myself and all my junk to my parents' for the summer. Which I need to figure out by the weekend. Yargh.

Should be fun. Wish me luck.

Have a good one, all!

Secret Fangirl Admission

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:37:26 GMT

I have a problem. I admit it. I have an attraction to the oddest characters sometimes, and am often rather ashamed of it.

Currently, I have a highly inappropriate fascination with Rorschach, of Watchmen. Yes, the little, smelly, psychotic pitbull of a man. This obsession started with the novel. Reading the novel, the character of Rorschach was the one I was the most invested in (with Dan coming in a close second, same in the movie), and the one whose logic, actions, backstory, and end kept me riveted in the story. But, while I enjoyed the character immensely, there was no Rorschach = hot!!1!1 there, at all. Just a fantastic character.

Then the movie happened. Rorschach was done fantastically well,* and for some reason the aforementioned equation popped up in my head and has refused to go away. I tried to pinpoint just what it was. It's not physical attraction to Jackie Earle Haley, as I don't find him attractive(though he does have fabulous eyes, another attraction of mine). But as Rorschach? Serve me up some more of that! I think I finally figured it out though.

Voice kink. Rough, gravelled, deep voice. The realization stemmed from the fact that I've got a bit of a Comedian thing as well, purely because of his voice. Same with Batman. And the recent episode of Supernatural with Dean and Castiel growling at each other, which reduced me to a puddle of glee. Also, come to think of it, Eric of True Blood. In that role I don't find the actor physically attractive, but the voice, oh, the voice.

But it's not just those type of voices; I could listen to Ewan McGregor's voice all day long and be happy if it never ended.

But even so, weird attractions. Particularly Rorschach, a man who appears to depise the very idea and even states that being Rorschach frees him from such base things as lust. And yet....

Also, I adored Heath Ledger's Joker because it was an absolutely fabulously done portrayal for the tone of the new Batman movies. But no physical attraction. Until I ventured into fanfic that I should not have. >.<

Oh the shame.

*Not that other parts weren't done well. I enjoyed all the performances, other than Silk Spectre II to whom I was kind of indifferent, and Ozymandias who was acted decently but not cast as well as the others, IMO.

A Quick Tidbit

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:36:23 GMT

I found out a few days ago that my boyfriend won't be going back overseas in the fall. Surprisingly, I'm not as relieved as I thought I'd be. I suppose that is because he's quite disappointed and frustrated (by that and various other things the higher ups are doing), so I 'm trying to sympathize with him rather than do a happy dance for myself. Now he won't be taking his troops off on training exercises next month, which means I can go visit him on my spring break. Now that I'm happy about. If he'd been off training, I wouldn't get the chance to see him until July.

To end on a random note: my text on the Black Death compares the mass burials to making lasagne. Such lovely imagery.

pimps

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:35:05 GMT

This entry is purely for shameless pimping of an awesome event: the Gateway Music Festival in Bengough, Saskatchewan. From July 25-27, the tiny town of Bengough will play host to more than 20 performers, covering a variety of genres including country, blues, folk, rock, pop, ska, and many more. ----->Festival Homepage<----- Headline acts: Doc Walker and Shane Yellowbird

Yes, both the main headline acts are country, albeit new country. But hey, there's lots of other groups to see.

And come on, the town's population is under 400 people at last count. The fact this with be the fourth year the town has put this event on, with it getting bigger and better every year is amazing. The total attendence for the weekend last year was more than SIX TIMES the town's population!

Oh, and for anyone curious, here are links to both parts of the video montage I made of last year's Festival (sorry, crappy vid quality at some points, but the video was taken on small digital cameras. Linkage: part one part two

Stress Stress Stress

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:10:12 GMT

*sigh* I have so much shit to do. And haven't started any of it.

I think I've hit the point where I've gotten so overwhelmed that I've shut down. Crap. Potentially problematic, that, especially considering I've spun myself a new web of little white lies that could utterly bugger things up for me if I don't get my stuff done. You'd think barely avoiding failing out of uni would have been enough of a kick in the ass to make me smarten up. And yet, here I am, messing around online while the time ticks by. Guess I'd better get going.

Time left to get done what I need to: 5.

....

Fuck.

Ain't Love Grand?

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:23:28 GMT

You know you've gotten comfortable in a relationship when you can make poo jokes.

(On the phone with my boyfriend)

He: Well, I guess I should go, since I'm moving in a week, I should start getting my crap organized.

Me:....You organize your crap? Haha, that's disgusting.

He: Well, you know, you've got the chunky pile, the dark brown pile, the soft pile.....the pile that resemble celebrities....

Me: Hahahaha, that must be a big one, so many celebrities are shitheads.

Both: [laughter]

Yup, we're kind of mental. It's all good.

Fear

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 07:39:32 GMT

Phobias are a pain.

I suppose I can't really say that, as I don't know if it would actually count as a phobia, but ah well, to the point:

I'm afraid of doctors. A few bad experiences in the past have led to my avoiding going to one at all costs. I will only go if there is absolutely no choice otherwise. Oddly enough, I'm fine when it comes to going to the dentist, despite having teeth that constantly needed work done(spacers, teeth pulled, etc. I refused braces though). Or at least I used to be fine with dentists.

At my last checkup they noticed that my two upper wisdom teeth had come in, and the lower two were working on it. However, the problem was with the lower pair. They're coming in at a pretty extreme angle, so they have to come out. Ok, that's not so horrible, as I said, I've had teeth pulled before, no problem. But then, they took an x-ray, just to check things out, and lo and behold, I'm an anomoly. It would seem there are another pair of teeth forming at the back of my upper jaw.

So I have 6 wisdom teeth. I know I can be a bit of a wise-ass at times, but this is going a bit to the extreme to prove it, I think.

But back to the point. So, even though my upper pair of wisdom teeth had come in fine, no problems at all, because of these extra ones, I'm going to have to go to an oral surgeon and get stuff done. Now, as soon as the word "surgeon" got put out there, I started having a bit of an inward panic attack. But then upon hearing that before anything, I need to make an appointment with the oral surgeon for a consultation, and only then will I get an appointment for the actual procedure. And the date set for my consultation was June 14th. Now, this was in February, so the thought of it being so far away calmed me down. In fact, I'd completely forgotten the date, until my mom reminded me that the 14th is next Thursday.

Considering that my reaction to that news was to get an upset stomach and stop talking for an hour doesn't bode well for how I'm going to handle this whole thing. The fact that someone I on my deviantART watchlist just had her wisdom teeth removed and is now hopped up on painkillers and other medication, and has now gotten herself a nice little infection really is not helping me.

In the end I'm sure I'll be able to suck it up and deal with it, if for no other reason than my odd trait of not allowing people to see how much I'm mentally freaking out.

To finish off, I'm curious, if anyone happens to read this: Is there anything that completely freaks you out like that? Doesn't have to be a big thing, could be something like fear of spiders or the dark or whatever. Like I said, I'm just curious.

Have a good one, all!

Introductions

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:27:46 GMT

Alright, first post time. First things first, I'm likely not going to do a whole lot in the way of posting here, since I have other sites (devART, RoosterTeeth) that I mess around on, and the main reason behind my joining LJ is because I just like looking at stuff on here. I'm a pretty shy person, generally, so I don't post a lot on any site, really. Anyway, on to the actual entry:

I'm currently in university, studying to become I don't know what. I'm in my second year, and having scrapped my original idea of veterinary medicine due to an extreme aversion to maths and chemistry, I'm now trying to figure out exactly what I want to do. For now, I'm debating between history or archaeology majors.

Interest-wise, I'm very into music. My main genre is rock, all kinds, and also country, but I listen to a variety of other things as well, and am willing to give anything a listen to try it out. My all-time favourite band is Crash Test Dummies. Other bands high on my list are Billy Talent, A Perfect Circle, Eve 6, Nickelback, Our Lady Peace, Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name a few. I'm an avid reader, with my favourite authors including Terry Pratchett, Diana Gabaldon, Anne Bishop, W.Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, Jane Austen, and J.K. Rowling. A few favourite titles are: Outlander, Pride and Prejudice, Reaper Man, Thief of Time, Lord John and the Private Matter, Heir to the Shadows, People of the Lakes. I play a few computer games, mostly strategy stuff like Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, that sort of thing.

Well, I can't really think of anything else to add at the moment, other than that when I do update with new entries, they likely won't be too profound, just me babbling on about one thing or another.

Have a good one, all!