Spring has arrived. Soon, the plants my sister and brother are sending me for my birthday will start arriving and I'll be able to put the compost to good use. They are sending me 3 butterfly bushes, 3 red latham raspberry bushes, and 6 oriental poppies. I'm very excited about gardening this year.

I haven't done any gardening since I rented the house in Columbia, Missouri and grew carrots out back. It was a very small house with a small yard, but it was a house with a yard and it was $185/month. Wow, that price seems great now, I couldn't rent a room for that around here these days. It's a different season here, in more ways than just not being winter anymore.

Several people I know "in real life" have told me I should post about my penny plan here. It's changed my life. It's taken me from being a lazy slob to being productive.

The penny plan started out simple. I get 1 penny for every 5 minutes of work, I pay 1 penny for every 5 minutes of television or online time. However, that simple structure was turned into a plan that works for me and has succeeded in keeping me from falling into the eternal distraction abyss. My rules are:

Earning pennies: 6 pennies to begin the day, 12 if purpleglitter is home from work that day. 1 penny for every 5 minutes of cleaning, crafting, or other productive work. 1 penny for every 5 minutes of Telugu practice. 1 penny for every 10 minutes of book reading (magazines, no matter how dry, don't count). 1 penny for every 10 minutes of photography. 2 pennies for every 5 minutes working on a "priority project" assigned by purpleglitter. Using pennies: Every 5 minutes of computer time costs me 1 penny. Every 5 minutes of television time costs me 1 penny. If I'm using the computer to prep photos, I pay half If I'm with purpleglitter, I pay half If I have no pennies, I cannot do any of the activities that require them.

The penny plan, unlike project schedule or project three meals, has proven to be something I can stick to. I've been on it successfully for almost a month at this point and I still going strong. It has truly transformed me.

The economic stimulus deal has convinced me that there is no hope for United States politics. Let's collectively borrow $146,000,000,000 and have ourselves a great little shopping spree! That'll fix everything! It's like looting the safe while the ship is sinking: you're going to miss the lifeboats.

I don't think I'm going to vote in the upcoming election. I just don't see the point. It doesn't matter who wins, the Democrats and Republicans pull the same crap and the only difference is the spin they put on it. The system in the United States is broken, it's only a matter of time until it implodes.

I bought 9 Rip-It Atomic Pom energy drinks at Walgreens last night. They were on "last chance" sale for a $1.09 each. The sale is a mixed blessing — on one hand it's nice to get one of my favorite energy drinks cheep, on the other hand they're cheap because I won't be able to get them anymore.

My account was suspended without warning because I had too many tags. I was told that I needed to bring the number of tags I had under 1000. I've deleted over half my tags and at this point and hope that is enough that I won't be resuspended. (They didn't directly unsuspended me – instead they responded with a link that would unsuspended my account, which I was to press after I'd "fixed" my tags.)

I was given no warning that my account was going to be suspended. I was never informed that there was a limit on how many tags I could have. I wasn't even sent an email telling me why my account was suspended so that I could correct the problem in a timely manner. I only found out when I tried to view my friends page.

To their credit, I was given a $15 gift certificate for LiveJournal services. The gift certificate is a nice gesture, but it has limited use to me as i have a permanent account and the secret tag limit issue is still a problem.

I will be taking a break from LiveJournal. I waste too much time here anyway. I don't know whether or not I'll be back. I leave that open at this point, but I have many other options — from hosting my own journal to starting up with another service to leaving blogging entirely. The future will hold what the future holds.

Good bye for now.

Poll #1065687
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

When you find a discarded scratch ticket (not in a trash can), do you check if to see it is a winner mistakenly tossed aside?

<EDIT>That read be "check to see". Can't fix poll text.</EDIT>

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Health — secrets for. — First, keep warm. Second, eat regularly and slowly. Third, maintain regular bodily habits. Fourth, take early and very light suppers, or, better still, none at all. Fifth, keep a clear skin. Sixth, get plenty of sleep at night. Seventh, keep a cheerful and respectable company. Eight, keep out of debt. Ninth, don't set your mind on things you don't need. Tenth, mind your own business. Eleventh, don't set up to be a sharp of any kind. Twelfth, subdue curiosity.

I love the last one: Trust us, you really don't want to know.

The addition $42 billion dollars in war funding requested by the Bush Administration is political move designed to allow both the Democrats and the Republicans to appeal to their bases. It smells of backroom dealing. The Democrats in congress will not approve this additional funding, but instead will fund the war at the originally requested levels. The Republicans can then appeal to their base by saying that the Democrats aren't giving the troops the funding they need, and the Democrats can appeal to their base by saying the actually did something by turning down the Bush Administration's additional request.

In the end, nothing changes.

found via dan4th:

The Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. greenback on Thursday for the first time in almost 31 years, capping a spectacular run that has seen it rise 62 per cent since 2002. The loonie briefly reached $1.0003 US on foreign-exchange markets shortly before 11 a.m. ET, the Bank of Canada said. The currency spent much of the rest of the day flirting with parity — at one point trading at $1.0006 — before closing at 99.87 cents US, up 1.37 cents from Wednesday's Bank of Canada close. full article

I feel the need to say: I called it.

purpleglitter and I went to Building 19¹/₂ Monday. Building 19 stores sell items other stores couldn't get off their shelves. They buy this stuff at a steep discount and it can be quite a bargain. Sometimes, it's easy to figure out why the item didn't sell very well...

I went down to New England Photo this afternoon and learned that zarthon's assessment of how much my camera will cost to repair was much more accurate than mine, and unfortunately the cost of getting my camera fixed is well over what I can afford to spend. On faith that it will be fixed, I bought the new lens cap I've been needing.

I'm going to see if I can repair the problem myself without taking the camera apart. There is at least a chance that I might be able to get it working and the risk of breaking the camera further is relatively low as long as I don't actually pry it open. Christian suggested swabbing the prongs in the battery case with alcohol. If that doesn't work, I'm going to attempt ti gently but firmly reposition the prongs. I have a few other ideas up my sleeve, but if none of that works I'll have to reassess my options.

Just for fun, I decided to look at the edits made from the United States Department of state using wikiscanner. I only looked at a fraction of the over 2,500 edits, but here are the ones I thought were interesting:

Laura Bush thinks Condi would be a great president

We're being invaded by Mexicans!!

"...the World Bank is one of the most highly-regarded financial institutions in the world..."

Tiawan is a pseudostate

"The statements about events in 2007 are clearly written by a Russian."

State Department predicts what issues will be contentious at the next Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union

The Department of State knows a lot about science and technology in China.

Somewhere in the world, humans can marry non-human animals

Delete – Who said the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal? No one said that

Delete – You can't say that the U.S. officials should have know that Bin Laden would turn his attention to the west after the Soviets were out of the way

Delete – Text on the United States Interests Section in Havana

Delete – A large chunk of the Missouri United States Senate election, 2006 article

Delete – Part of the discussion on the Agent Orange talk page

For years now, the Canadian dollar has been growing stronger while the U.S. dollar has been growing weaker, with the U.S. Dollar dollar falling as low as C$1.0555 yesterday. Long gone are the days when traveling from the United States to Canada felt like winning the lottery in the currency exchange.

With the slump in stock prices and the now overtly worried fed things don't look to well for the United States. Add in the Chinese using threats of liquidating their U.S. debt holdings to ward off trade sanctions, I see no reason to believe that this trend will not continue. The Chinese threat, even if never acted on, demonstrates effectively the direness of the financial situation in the United States after almost 7 years of Bush's borrow and spend policies.

My prediction: Within the next 6 months, the Canadian dollar will surpass the U.S. dollar.

Poll #1038782
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Complete this statement: A drop in housing prices in my area would be...

I just went down to UPS to return some Verizon components. Verizon had given us a return UPS label, so there wasn't really a choice who to use. I had to buy a box there, and for one small package box I was charged $4.50. U-Haul charges less than $4 for their large boxes. UPS apparently sells moving boxes as well now, but given the prices of their small shipping boxes, I can't imagine how much they're charging for the moving boxes.

UPS is rather pointless anyway (unless your a large corporation with a mass shipping deal). FedEx is faster and more reliable, the USPS is cheaper. UPS seems the worst of both worlds and I tend to avoid them unless I'm required to use them like today.

Haven't given much of an update lately on what I've been up to.

The weekend before last my sister, Madeline, and Christian came up to visit. I met them downtown on Saturday and my sister took me to get my first ever professional manicure. I had a lot of fun and Maddie is a joy. She is so huge, though! I'd swear she was 10 or 11 if I didn't know she was 7.

Last weekend, invalid_userid came down for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release. purpleglitter, invalid_userid waited in the long line in Harvard Square. Usually waiting in lines is boring, but with the crowd I had a great time. There were a couple profiteers who got in the front of the line and walked down it trying to sell their books for $50. I didn't see anyone buying, but I'm sure they found someone when they got near the end (which rumor had it was somewhere in Watertown). I was very excited to get merryperseis's register when I finally got my books, I had thought the odds of that rather slim.

zarthon took purpleglitter, invalid_userid and me out to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the next day. Inevitably a lot of the book was left out, but I think enough critical stuff was missing that someone who hadn't read the books probably wouldn't be able to make much sense of it.

Sunday, we all went to the Museum of Science. The exhibits there have enough range to appeal to any level of scientific knowledge. We saw a demonstration of the still very functional original Van de Graaff generator built by Robert J. Van de Graaff in 1933, but my favorite part of the Museum of Science visit was the butterfly exhibit, where a large owl butterfly landed on my shoulder and sat there for a very long time just looking at me and occasionally stretching its wings. Looking into the butterfly's eyes made me regret all the nasty rhetoric I've spouted about exotherms.

Next weekend, our new landlord is coming to visit from California. She has not seen the building in over a year. I'm excited to meet her, she sounds awesome over the phone. She's trying to rent the unit next door, so if anyone is interested in a two-bedroom in Arlington, let me know.

At the end of next month, I will be heading down to see my sister in the Washington, D.C. area. My mom will be visiting there at the same time, so it should be a great trip.

The bank at the end of my block was robbed today. I stopped by on to meet porcelaingirl and although I ended up using the ATM, I did notice that the tellers looked uncharacteristically dour. It seemed odd, but I didn't think much of it until I returned home and read that they had been robbed only a 2 hours before I was there. Police haven't identified the robber, but say he is likely the same person responsible for a string of bank robberies in the last two weeks.

Found via dkmnow in _psychmedfree_ and antipsychiatry:

People diagnosed with schizophrenia who are not on antipsychotics are more likely to experience recovery than those taking the medication, according to an American study. Over 15 years, schizophrenia patients not on antipsychotics showed more periods of recovery than those taking antipsychotics, states a research paper in last month’s Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Researchers reported that, after 10 years, 79% of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas 23% of those not on medication were psychotic. After 15 years, 65 per cent of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas only 28% of those not on medication were psychotic. ... The research was part-funded by America’s National Institute of Mental Health. full article

While I don't have schizophrenia, these results do not surprise me after my experiences with Geodon, Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel. At first I was a believer. I "felt better" when I took them.

Zyprexa was the first with it's horrible weight gain effects. Then came risperdal, then came seroquel, then Geodon. I was given Haldol inpatient a couple times, the only old school antipsychotic I've been on. It wasn't much different than the newer atypicals.

They all made me "feel better" at first. But, what "feeling better" really meant was not thinking. The major side effect of not thinking when you have mental problems is that you can never work through those problems. Working through problems of the mind requires thought, requires figuring out coping mechanisms and how to break old loops.

I definitely wouldn't say I'm perfect at this point, there's still progress I need to make, but I've made so much