On my cigar walk this morning i realized two things. The first was that today is the last day of amnesty month at the library, I best be returning that last book today. I forgot the other thing I realized, but I have a feeling it was important.

I did notice that the trolls are out in reality, I saw a graffito of the URL to goatse along the bike trail up past Arlington Center.

I just spent several hours trying to get these pictures to upload. Very frustrated with LiveJournal and Semagic. Will, of course, get over it.


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Arlington Town Day was great! Last night, I watched the fireworks down by Spy Pond with dicotomygrrl. This is the best fireworks show I've seen put on by Arlington yet, there were several points that I thought were the grand finale, but it continued. The actually grand finale was loud and bright and simply awesome.

I went to the festivities in Arlington Center today with purpleglitter. On the way there, we stopped at a yard sale within a block of my house. I was surprised to see them selling a large hookah for only $5! I have a three-person hookah, but it is very unwieldy and cannot be easily used with less than three people. Hookahs, with their large bowl size, are perfect for smoking catnip. With this new hookah, mazzycat will just have to deal with sharing more.

They held the hookah for me so that I didn't have to lug it around town day. At town day I picked up several small items: a cheep fold out fan that was made of wood rather than paper so it won't fall apart in 5 minutes, a brooch for $1.50, and a $2 laser toy to replace mazzycat's dead one.

The highlight of our day was going on the tour of the Jason Russell House. I've lived in Menotomy for around a decade now, and I've never been inside. I loved it and the tour guide was impressively knowledgeable on both the history of the building and etymology.

After the tour, we bought food from the Sweet Chili booth. As they were closing for the day, they gave us a wikkid good deal on our purchase. We also grabbed a couple spring rolls from the Shanghai Kitchen booth.

After eating we walked home in the beautiful weather.

For breakfast yesterday I had a veggie burger with basil mozzarella cheese and barbecue sauce; for lunch I had pizza balls with basil mozzarella, faux ham, and faux turkey topped with parmesan cheese; for dinner I had spaghetti in pizza sauce with parmesan cheese; for my healthy snack I had cashews.

Food went well, but I only got half of my half hour of exercise in with a walk up to Arlington Center and back in last evening's thunderstorm. Getting in my exercise is going to be hard right now because I've been having lots of wobbly/dizzy/fally/seizurey/whatever-the-hell-who-knows-the-doctors-apparently-don't episodes, but I will not let that be an excuse. I will continue to try to make Project Three Meals work. I refuse to let this crap control my life.

Out in Arlington Center today, I saw a friend of mine but I shouted out the wrong name. The name I called them by was a name of someone that I used to see often them with. I realize I was doing it until they had walked away. I feel horribly embarrassed about the whole thing, as they are someone that I should really know the name of. I don't know if they noticed me and didn't respond because they were annoyed or confused, or if they simply didn't hear me.

Thursday night I went for a walk around 11:30. I made it to Arlington Center and ended up feeling very uncoordinated. I sat on the concrete side of a planter. I became very creeped out. There were a few small groups milling about and I was becoming concerned. I couldn't really defend myself or attempt to escape if someone decided to attack me. I really just wanted to get home. I didn't like the situation, and my instinct were telling me I needed to get to safety as soon as possible. I got up before I was really ready to and attempted to cross the street and ended up on the median for about 10 minutes. I really didn't like being there, because you become much more visible when you are on the ground and being on the ground on the median enhances that more. I did manage to get off the median eventually and crossed the rest of the street. I saw a bus coming when I got to the sidewalk but was unable to make it the rest of the way to the bus stop. After another 10 or 15 minutes, an officer approached me, then another. They asked me if I'd been drinking or doing drugs. I hadn't. The fire department arrived quickly after the officer called in a "rescue". The fire department paramedic said it looked like I was having a seizure. At least someone's looking. The non-fire department ambulance that was to take me away took a long time in arriving. By the time it did, I was feeling coordinated enough to walk well. However, the police did not want me walking home, and since they could not give me a ride, insisted that I go with the ambulance. For some reason, after I was loaded into the ambulance, another arrived and they decided it would be better for me to go in that one. In the process of moving from on to the other, purpleglitter found me. Even though the police were gone, the ambulance paramedics decided it was acceptable for her to take me home as the main concern was me walking. I really didn't want to have to deal with the emergency room staff being upset at my audacity to come in again, so I was quite happy for the ride. I may try to confine my walks to safer hours for the time being.

When I arrived home from the asylum, I found a letter stating that I had yet another overdraft charge. I seem to be utterly incapable of keeping track of my balance and the $25 fees add up. I decided that I should just cash my SSDI check instead of depositing it and handle things in cash. I headed out to Arlington center, and only fell once on my way there and was able to get up quickly. I did end up sitting on a bench for 15 minutes shortly thereafter waiting to regain my coordination.

My first stop was Leader Bank. There I was told that since they are not publicly traded they are exempt from being required to cash treasury department checks for non-customers. No luck. I went on to Bank of America. There I was told as a non-customer I had to have two forms of identification for them to cash the check. I only had my licence with me. Strike two.

I decided to try my luck at Cambridge Savings Bank. I knew my account was negative there, but I hoped they would cash my with just one form of identification anyway. The teller told me the system wouldn't let her do it because my account was overdrawn. I asked by how much, and it was only $3.76. Aparently I had a little over $20 in the account when the overdraft fee hit. Seeing as the amount was so small, I told her to take the $3.76 out of the check, cash my check as a customer with one form of identification, then close my account. She did, and I'm now done with banks (except what will be my monthly trip to cash my check).

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purpleglitter drove me to my therapy appointment at 5:15. I signed in at the front desk and waited. 5:30, no therapist. The receptionist paged her. 5:45, no therapist. The receptionist paged her again, then noted that my appointment time was actually at 6:00 and not my normal time, and that's probably why my therapist wasn't responding. I had things to do, so I just left.

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purpleglitter dropped me off at the corner and went up to her house to bake merryperseis's birthday cake. I fell heading from the corner to my house, spilling my Monster. Several people asked if I was okay, but no one called anyone on me. I got back in the house and ended up lying in bed for some stupid reason and fell asleep. I drifted in and out of sleep and seizure for a couple hours, having nasty dreams that everything was getting worse and that I was being locked away forever. Finally, merryperseis came into my room and helped me out of bed. I ended up falling on the floor in the hall and sat there until I felt balanced enough to go down the stairs.

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recoiling, purpleglitter, and iamacliche were downstairs and we had quite a wonderful time celebrating the anniversary of merryperseis's birth. Towards 1:00 I started feeling very twitchy again, and couldn't really get up from the couch. All the non-residents of the house_of_clocks had left, and merryperseis had to go to purpleglitter's apartment and pick up my meds, my Metamucil cookies, and mazzycat's tuna for me. I was planning on just crashing on the couch, but did eventually make it up to my room and to sleep.

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Everyday is an adventure nowadays. Some moments I feel so elated I could fly, others I feel suicidal hopelessness, and others I'm simply on the ground. I have some very difficult moral choices to make. The kind where there is no good choice and I must find the one that is least wrong.

Another day today. Another day again. Days just seem to come one after another these days.

purpleglitter, iamacliche, and I set off yesterday afternoon for the Arlington Town Day festivities. When we arrived at Arlington Center we could see no tables or booths or crowds of people. purpleglitter and iamacliche stayed behind as I scouted ahead to see if things were set up a bit further up the Mass Ave this year. But no, they weren't. A nice old lady informed us that Arlington Town Day had been postponed until next week because of the weather. That is very disappointing, because Cindy Sheehan was supposed to be at Town Day. I doubt she'll be there when it actually occurs next week.

After finding there was no town day, we all popped into the Chai Café for lunch. I had a Limca and chole kulcha with naan and bought some cheap microwavable Indian meals. I have yet to try them, but purpleglitter says they're delicious.

Back at purpleglitter's apartment, recoiling joined the three of us to make a four of us. We watched Monsters, Inc.. While I very much enjoyed the short film For The Birds that came before the movie on the tape, but the movie bothered me. They did have some innovative ideas and some parts would have been quite funny if I could have gotten my mind past the heavy-handed sexism and gender role enforcement. The Monsters, Inc. factory has only two female employees that appear in the film as opposed to countless male employees. Out of those two employees, one is the cute, ditzy, and braindead receptionist whom everyone loves, and the ugly, pushy, and hoarse-voiced filing clerk whom everyone hates. It was like watching a film from the fifties, only this was set in a bizarre form of modern times. And this crap is for the children of the 21^st century.

Patriarchy brainwashing please, extra sudsy.

I've noticed similar problems with rolls for women in a many of cgi movies. While other mediums are far from perfect, cgi movies are decades behind live action movies and even other forms of animation in terms of feminism. Granted, I haven't seen every full length cgi film there is, but I've seen enough to know that the problem is a very pervasive one in the industry, even though it is possible there is an exception or two that I have not seen. I guess these films are free from being politically advanced because they are technologically advanced.

dan4th surprised me by randomly showing up at the house_of_clocks.

We got pakoras for lunch at Chai Café in Arlington Center. The pakoras at Punjab are yummy and cheap. Punjab's tamarind sauce is excelent as well. Good tamarind sauce is a necessity to smother the pakoras in. I have a feeling I'm going to become a regular customer.

After lunch, dan4th took me to the hardware store where I picked up some things for a project I'm working on at the house_of_clocks.

Next we went to a tent sale at Video Horizons. I picked up two movies: Stigmata and Cecil B. Demented.

dan4th is a wonderful friend. One that I'm time and time again thankful I have. Things often seem much clearer after talking to him. I hope he randomly shows up more often.