The Shittiest Days Fertilize the Prettiest Flowers

[shanmonster]

I am cursed.

I've been trying to do some lost-wax casting for one week, and today, after two abortive tries due to power failures and scheduling conflicts, it finally happened. Unfortunately, my work was doomed. It took me about nine hours to carve and prepare my waxes, and today, the casting just didn't work. I think that maybe my flask was slightly misaligned, because most of the silver didn't leave the crucible.

Then, I tried to solder hinges on my necklace, but that didn't work, either. I ended up soldering part of my hinge to the wrong side of the necklace, and another piece to a steel pin anchoring my necklace in place on the brick. When I tried to heat the pin up to let the tubing slide off, instead, the tubing melted into a ball.

Other things I attempted also went wrong, today, so I came home. There's no sense in staying there and destroying all of my jewellery, one piece at a time. I hope I can do much better tomorrow.

f00dave is very sick with a flu/cold, and I've been feeling craptacular for about a week. I don't know if I'm trying to fight off whatever it is f00 has, or what. I woke up in the middle of the night with killer-bee cramps. My uterus felt like it was filling with boiling lead. I'm suspect my trip to Halifax may be a bad idea. If I feel no better tomorrow, I won't go. Drat.

At long last, I went to kung fu on Tuesday night. It all went to hell during the warm-up. I started blacking out any time my heart rate accelerated, and it stayed like that for the rest of the night. Actually, it was still like that the next day. I don't know if it's the Propranolol, me coming down with this flu thing, or a combination of the two. Probably the latter. I had to sit down for about half of the class. In any case, the night wasn't a total bust. I did extensive stretching, and I was able to help out some of the brand new kung fu students. I worked one-on-one with a kinetically-retarded guy. I feel sorry for him. He's trying so incredibly hard, but very, very little of what he does bears even the smallest similarity to what it should look like. At the very least, he did learn the difference between a reverse punch and a sun punch, and he did get the bare basics of a jump from cat stance into horse stance. Now, if I could only get him to take his frigging socks off, he'll stop sliding all over the floor. He seems pretty hopeless to me right now, but if he keeps trying, he might surprise me. I really hope so.

There's another class tonight, but I don't think I'll go. I still feel faint. Just getting up out of my chair a bit too quickly is enough to make me grasp onto something for support.

After doing yet more research on Propranolol, I see that if I were a man, it could be making me impotent. And now that I'm coming off it, my adrenaline production is going into hyperdrive, and my pulse is increasing. No wonder I feel both hyper and vapourish.

Fun times, hmm?

Later this afternoon, I'm going to get my eyes checked. I know I need a new prescription, because my already terrible vision has taken a sharp turn for the worse over the past year. I expect the new glasses to set me back about $500. I wish laser surgery was covered by insurance.

I get to go out to supper, tonight. f00's mom is in town, and she wants to go to The Snooty Fox. I really like the food there, but the place is so damned noisy it seriously gets on my nerves. I like to be able to hear conversations, rather than sit there nodding glibly while all I hear is a cacophonous roar. Ah well. At least I'll get some good food out of it, hmm? I'll probably go for the roast beef sandwich, or the Guinness steak pie. Both of them are tasty.

See? It's not all so bad. I've been going to the gym regularly for quite some time, and I'm finally shrinking my BMI back down to something respectable. I've upped most of my weights, and I've gained about thirteen pounds of muscle. When I see myself in the mirror at the gym, I don't have bulges by my elastics anymore. My tank tops are all getting too tight around the arm holes again. And f00 took pictures at the dance performance on the weekend. Although the photos are all pretty shitty because of bad lighting and no tripod, there are a couple that show well-defined biceps, deltoids, and triceps, even though I never flex my arms while I dance. Hoorah! It's about time my muscles came back. I've missed them.

Check this out:

"While sitting in your chair, lift your right foot slightly off the ground and move it in clockwise circles. Now draw the numeral "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will involuntarily reverse direction." Whoa! Thanks, Miss Wurzel Todd.

Also check out Shakespeare's guide to doing the Hokey Pokey (thanks, Alan!):

O proud left foot, that ventures quick within
Then soon upon a backward journey lithe.
Anon, once more the gesture, then begin:
Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.
Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke,
A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl.
To spin! A wilde release from Heavens yoke.
Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl.
The Hoke, the poke -- banish now thy doubt
Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about.

And now for your regularly scheduled linkage....

Dog rape attempt goes astray: " He told police he noticed a brown female stray dog wagging its tail and 'acting sexy' and pulled it into some tall grass by the roadside." I guess the bitch was asking for it.

Man marries dog for luck - then dies: I don't think it was the same dog.

Couple convicted of incest speaks out: Personally, I don't see what the brouhaha is all about. They're both adults, and it's not like the father had even know she was his daughter, in the first place.

Enter the dragon: You've probably seen this story by now, but if not, check it out! It's a baby dragon in formeldahyde. It couldn't possibly be fake, because dragons were definitely real in the 1800s. I mean, that's when all those knights were rescuing maidens in distress, right?

Sand: I've never before seen gorgeous performance art anything like this. I wish I had thought up and mastered something like this (thanks, Dead Corpse).

Comments

[tobysionann.livejournal.com]

The Sand Art is amazing. Thanks for sharing!

Re:

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. It's beautiful, isn't it?

[swirlingchaos.livejournal.com]

I think i almost dislocated my knee trying to keep my foot moving clockwise. That was neat. You start thinking you have some sort of reasonable control over your body and then something like this comes along and puts you in your place.

If you dont mind i think i'm going to add you to my friends list. I like reading what you have to write about.

Oh, and by the way, that dragon is great. They need to hook up some animatronics to the eyes so it can occaisionally blink at people and scare them right out of their shoes. :) Of course, it must be fake because everyone knows that real dragons come from eggs and dont have umbilical cords. duhh.

Re:

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Yes, the umbilical cord should have been the clincher from the get-go.