flu. that's about the last thing i needed to come down with...ok, let's get real...i could have come down with pretty much anything and it would have been the last thing i needed. so revised...illness. that's about the last thing i needed to come down with.

it's probably time to change my mind on that whole vaccine thing.

so i'm up. it's 2am. i'm freezing because i'm in the living room, which has major ass draft. i'm watching some damn show called platinum weddings and it's irritating me. so i must change channels. i don't care about watching people with an extra hundred grand or so to spend on ONE FUCKING DAY.

but the good news is that it's looking good for me getting a raise, which is about fucking time. i have no clue what the details are on that. but at least there's now hope.

sometimes i worry that these drugs i take to *normalize* are doing anything but that. yeah, we've been through this before. i mean i was afraid to take anything for way too long but the cocktail i'm on...i'm just not sure it's really helping much...maybe i expect too much. maybe i just need to accept that i'll always be this way and that it's ok. or is that giving in too much? giving up rather than acceptance...

my personal version of ocd is having to have everything "just right" in any document i'm working on before i can feel "ready" to write. the bullshit part of what i just said is that i do my best writing on the fly and in a hurry and my worst when i have everything set up "just right." so how to remedy this?

so i just need to tell some stories...just start to tell some stories...not just story snippits like you see here but stories...most of the whole damn truth of the matter. something like that. then i have to go through a bunch of bullshit bureaucratic crap with my college -- like the new thesis checker approval for every god damn step of the way. why? what the hell kind of waste of time is that? it's not like any phase is going to look like the last phase and besides...how many faculty members know the grad college's thesis format requirements by heart or even enough to give a shit?

hoop.

hoop.

hoop.

speaking of wastes of time, i had to take that damn ethics exam that the state requires from all university employees and guess what? here's all you need to know: don't steal money, don't accept gifts from contractors trying to gain favor with the state/university (of course how would you know this unless you had the time to waste pouring over every goddamn piece of paper in this place?), and don't politic during work hours. got it. whatever. but i wish i worked in a department where filling it out was crossing the picket line...honestly? i can't afford the $5k penality from my department. but a certain other academic department is banding together and NOT filling it out to fight the system to say that it would be unethical to fill out the ethics exam with the answers that they want because by doing that (see question #10), you pretty much violate the whole damn system by answering it correctly (ie, "yes").

but it's not MY department. of course not. instead we pay attention to procedure, as procedure is important to follow because that's what good citizens of freedom do...follow...follow...follow the rules because if you don't then the terrorists win. i remember when there was some point of my life where i believed that our college was somehow counterculture. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. we're so far up the administration's ass it's ridiculous.

i know i know...don't hold back. tell me how you really feel.

back from canada, back now for days but i'm so tired and i guess it's most likely anemia, right? time for more iron pills...

weirdness...the room service breakfast guy who i've seen every morning this week...turns out he is syrian and the thing is? his mother's last name was our original last name...and then he asks if i have relatives in nebraska. uh...yeah. my grandfather GREW UP there!

it is an amazingly small world and i think that this week i met the man my grandfather might have been had he never met my grandmother...uncanny.

time to go to the airport now...

influential gamer? not sure that's the right title for me but it is a nice article. what's funny is that the news comes from the college i work for rather than the college i'm in. actually it's not funny at all. but i'm pretty used to it. i should be. by now.

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snow...wind...hitting me in the eyes and it's hard to take a picture of snow that's so wild and fast.

red against white. and the man at the counter demanding valium and the pharmacist said that it happens every day, she was just going to call security. my whole being is the canadian flag and will i have to pay for the damages to the linens?

i made it through the presentation...and then went to an urgent care clinic because i was in more than enough pain and guess what i left in chambana? my period seriously is a week early. so i discovered canadian medicine. it seems much more calm. yeah, it's just as slow as us ERs...only they believe that you are actually in pain. and the nurse even double checked my blood pressure after they gave me the shot because she was worried that my blood pressure might get really low after the shot because it was already so low to begin with. i clearly favor my grandfather on that issue...

so this conference has been pretty unfun for me...i did get to talk to a canadian broadcasting company reporter about game accessibility, though, and that was cool. hopefully they will air it...he said he'd email to let me know later when it would be available on their website. oh...did i tell you that i was named one of the 100 most influential women in the game industry? yeah that was shocking. but cool.

so here's what i'm think of for next summer (my target "prize" for defending my dissertation. go to china for HCII and then spend a few weeks travelling around asia and then hit digra/tokyo game show then i don't have to endure four 18 hour flights a month apart in time and maybe i can see hong kong, thailand, vietnam, maybe korea unless that loon in north korea has blown up the whole region...that would significantly damper that trip...

and, no, i'm not leaving ontario until friday so that gets me another day away from the latest airline/airport mess thanks to that baseball player flying into a new york apartment building and then jesse and i pretending we were fox news covering "the hidden terrorist agenda" no matter what the truth actually turned out to be...but tomorrow is thesis super work day now that the conference is done and done tomorrow morning and there's nothing i'm particularly interested in seeing tomorrow morning so it was technically done and done today.

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downtown london ontario, taken from a starbucks (i'm always taking mobile phone pix from a starbucks...why?

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work in the middle of the night, trying to get organized, trying to get into some kind of routine...mostly failing...as the cramping started to roll in...

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london, ontario at night...while i was up until 4am cramping...it was outside raining and this shot is blurred...but the fedex kinkos sign only has the "ex-kink" lights working...

another thing...so 5 people in the us and 2 people in canada have entered hospital and are completely paralyzed by the botulism in cartons of carrot juice that had been recalled yet still on the shelves at stores. first of all...what the fuck? first spinich, then lettace...now carrot juice. second...why were they drinking carrot juice anyway????

btw, a handfull of people have walked up to me and said "aren't you one of the 100 most influential women in the games industry?" is it the red hair?

posting from futureplay conference...free wifi all over this damn town, which is apparently has 350k people living in it but there's no way i believe that. so anyway, the morning was spent looking for pharmasave for pain killers because, yes, of course that time of month is starting but it's between 800mg of advil and 5 mg hydrocodone on the pain scale...so luckily this is canada so i was able to buy tylenol with codeine (along with caffeine so now i'm buzzing from the caffeine, which at least makes me feel less sleepy). must be nice to live in a civilized country...speaking of which...

the other day c and i were walking around downtown and we passed by this other couple who was talking in disbelief about "how dare there be an anti-american protest" (read: it was probably an anti-war protest...remember we live in bush country where everything is black or white) and if they hate this land of the free so much then they should go to iraq. uh, yeah, well...that's the point of the protest...we've fucked up iraq so much that the people of iraq are no doubt saying "wow. thanks...thanks a lot for completely wrecking our country." so perhaps our "either you love america or you hate it" couple can go visit iraq themselves and see what we've done there...maybe we all should.

anyway, this afternoon when i arrived for the talks i wanted to see...i saw one on qualitative research and i was like FUCK YEAH they JUST gave me a place to, well, place my dissertation. basically the talk...just that talk made it 100% worth the trip to ontario. i could see no other talks and that would be ok because i saw that talk. the light at the end of the tunnel just got a lot brighter.

fuck yeah.

in london ontario where it seems to be a post-industrial crash flint michigan crossed with champaign-urbana...kinda. it's definitely a college town, apparently one of the largest universities in canada is the university of western ontario. but a lot of the reason for the desolate downtown, i imagine, is the fact that today is canadian thanksgiving so the only restaurant open was at my hotel and a pricey $35 (canadian) for a swanson's tv dinner...ok, it wasn't that bad. but it wasn't that good either.

it seemed that people seemed uncomfortable by my having a table for one but fuck it. i mean it's not like i'm not used to having thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant...and it's not my thanksgiving anyway (we, however, in the states are *celebrating* columbus day...). but, you know, it was no big deal for me and there's no way i was paying room service charges. christ.

i've mapped out pharmacies in the local area and i really don't think i'm gonna have a problem getting the canada-only cramp meds...

first post in october and what do you know...it's my birthday.

it's been a strange day...but it's not like that really sets the day apart from any other of my days. i'm still pretty weirded out by the fictional conversation that happened last night. and i'm wearing the shoes i bought at century 21 next to the world trade center back in, uh, 1998 but the strange thing is that they are back in style, at least here in the US. and i'm wearing red lipstick and it dawns on me that you can't really pull off red until you've hit your 30s. you just end up feeling like a clown any time before that...

no word from my family and i suppose i deserve that. i really don't know anymore...but, you know? they forgot my 18th birthday too...funny.