The Road So Far

For the full experience, please press play before you begin reading. 

Here is my annual summary of my "accomplishments" from the past year. Okay, let's start with what I did and did not manage to check off of my to-do list from last year.

1- Do some real activism. Also, write more animal right related posts here.- 
I did not, in fact, do any real activism, but I did write a few animal rights related posts. So I guess that's something. 

2- Find a way to make enough money to get by without wishing I were dead.
I'm calling this one close enough.

3- I am going to rephrase the "social skills" one a bit and say that I want to start doing more social activities., and  find, at least, one that I actually enjoy.
I'm counting my martial arts classes for this one. I think that's as close as I'm likely to get to any social activities.

4- I still really want to take a martial arts class.
I have, in fact, been taking two. Plus my capoeira DVD. 

5- I damn well better be able to do a fucking pull up by next year! 
I should get bonus points for this one! Since I'm now at ten overhand and ten underhand. 

6- I AM going to go back to Farm Sanctuary this year, and hopefully back to the Festival of Colors as well.
Once again, I did not make it to Farm Sanctuary, but I did go back to the Festival of Colors.

7- Learn to act like one of those confident girls. Who know, stand up for myself, stand up for my beliefs, talk to people.
I'm giving myself half a point for this one. I'm definitely better than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go.

8- Learn to make metal jewelry, and hopefully actually sell some.
Not so much, but I'm working on it, okay!?

9- Write more poetry, and hopefully perform it somewhere.
I have actually read my poems aloud twice now. I sucked at it, but I did it. Also, I may do it again toward the end of January. Maybe.

10- Buy a car. A cool one would be nice but, at this point, I would settle for a piece of shit one.
Hah! No.

11- Write something more substantial than a blog post. Get another article published? Write for the Flaming Vegan? Work on the "book" I started writing forever ago? Something.
I did actually submit a short story to a magazine. I still don't know if it will be published but hey, I tried.

12- I don't know, maybe go on a fucking date or something. Have some sort of romantic type interaction with another human being.
Again, I didn't do it well, but I did it.

13- Get myself on a real schedule so that maybe I can accomplish half of the things I set out to do, in a given day. Especially get my sleep schedule down, so that I don't start out the day with several less hours than I had planned on.
I have been doing really well with this lately, mostly thanks to the alarm clock my mom bought me. It has a "bed shaker" which works amazingly well.

14- Keep up with my goddamn email! Fucking hell I have so many emails! 
My email is finally under control. 


As for my bucket list, I did
26-Have sexy pictures taken. 
My sister took some really cool ones for me. 
27-Get my skin cleared up. 
It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be. I'm chalking it up to my obsessively healthy diet, also coconut oil. 

Some other things I've done are 
1-Started the process of getting the cats fixed. 
2-Spent a lot more of my free time reading and writing and a lot less time watching TV. 
3-Got rid of all the nasty carpet in the house. 
4-Gotten to the point where I no longer eat any junk food at all. I have, in fact, completely beaten my corn chip addiction. 
5-Learned a lot about various pagan beliefs, and actually did a few rituals. 
6-Went to Phipps Conservatory, which was really quite lovely. 
7-Got, sort of, a whole new look that I'm fairly pleased with, including a hair color I like to think of as "Caprica Six blonde". 
8-Convinced my sister to start watching Supernatural. 
9-Started the process of filling in the pig mud. I'm counting this even though it made almost no difference. 
10-Even though the whole clay jewelry idea didn't pan out very well. I did make one necklace that I really like and wear every day. 

For anyone who made it through my large list of small accomplishments, I'm rewarding you with a bonus song. Also, I apologize to anyone who reads this blog but doesn't watch Supernatural; you must be so confused right now. 

Oh Happy Day!

I got really lazy this weekend and didn't go to the grocery store. Which was fine because I usually try to buy extra of all the stuff I eat everyday. The problem is, I didn't have quite enough pig food to get through the week. I tried to convince myself to go to the store sometime before or after work, but that just wasn't going to happen. So I decided that I would get a bag at the feed store here in town, to get me through to the weekend. I expected the stuff they had there to be complete shit and thought "Oh well, it won't hurt them to eat one bag of bad food." Well, it turns out that the stuff the sell at the local place is far better than the stuff from Tractor Supply. It actually says "all natural" and "no animal by-products" on the label, and it has a ton of added vitamins in it. I feel so much better about feeding them stuff that isn't full of chemicals and who knows what else. Plus, it's slightly cheaper than the other stuff and I don't have to drive to Morgantown or Clarksburg to buy it.

In case you hadn't noticed, my life is pretty pathetic. So this is really good news for me.

Also, I just wanted an excuse to use this image because Easy A is fucking hilarious. 

Worth It ......?

On Saturday after class my mom, my sister, and I made a trip to Pittsburgh. Phipps has this big Christmas light display going on at night, after their regular hours are over. So the plan was to get there shortly after dark, see the lights, and head home. Well, shockingly, things did not exactly go according to plan.

When we started getting close to the place, we noticed a shit-ton of cars parked everywhere all along the road. We kept thinking that surely not all of these people were here to look at plants with Christmas lights on them; there must be something else going on in the same area. Wrong! We kept driving around looking for a spot and by the time we found one we weren't entirely sure where we were in relation to the conservatory. My mom actually got out of the car and asked some pedestrians how close we were. They told us that we weren't far, but that there were people lined up outside and that it would probably be at least a half an hour until we could get in. Personally, I had absolutely no desire to 1-stand around outside for half an hour, or 2- be in any building that had that many fucking people in it.

We decided to go do something else instead, but couldn't really think of anything to do. So we sort of drove around aimlessly for a while, with a few brief stops; along the street for my sister to take pictures of statues, at Whole Foods, and at a restaurant. We were about to give up and go home when they decided to go back to Phipps and see if the crowd had thinned out. It had, kind of. We got inside right away, but still had to fight our way around way too many people. Everything was very pretty, but it would have been a lot nicer with a few less bodies crowding up against us. Overall, it was okay I guess.

These were my favorites. 

Facing My Fears

Sorry there was no post yesterday. I went to jui jitsu in the morning and then my mom, my sister, and I went to Pittsburgh and I didn't have time to write. I'll probably talk about the Pittsburgh trip tomorrow.

Anyway, I didn't have class on Friday, but jiu jitsu yesterday went pretty well. I feel like I'm starting to pick up a little bit of it anyway. It still seems like everything in jiu jitsu has way too many steps, but I may manage to figure it out eventually.

One thing that was less pleasant about the class was that the people who run the place brought their kids in yesterday. This would have been fine, except for the fact that they both had colds and were dripping snot everywhere. I sincerely wanted to run out of there, but I managed to restrain myself.

I must say, assuming I don't actually catch some kind of disease, this whole martial arts thing is probably going to be good for me, in that I am being forced to overcome my germ issue. Yesterday was, by far, the most difficult incident yet but even without contaminated children I've still done quite a lot of things that make me very uncomfortable, from a cleanliness standpoint. I have rolled around on mats that have had I don't even know how many sets of bare feet on them, rubbed up against a bunch of sweaty people, and worn gloves and shin guards soaked in other people's sweat. I think I've made quite a lot of progress.

The Herbivore's Dilemma Part 2: Life Choices

Probably the biggest dilemma in anyone's life, which I think seems even more exaggerated for the animal rights advocate, is the decision about what to do with your life in general. Everyone struggles with those major life choices; what career to pursue, where to live, whether or not to start a family, those sorts of things. For most people though, these choices are primarily just about deciding what will make them happy (which, by the way, is difficult enough in and of itself) but for the animal rights activist, these seemingly personal decisions take on a whole other level of meaning. As I said in my previous post on this subject, it is quite possible to incorporate helping animals into our everyday lives, but figuring out how to best go about that can be quite confusing. 

When it comes to career, should you focus on trying to find an animal rights related job (which are few and far between, and usually low-paying when you do find them) or try to find something that pays well, so that you will be able to afford to help monetarily with the causes you care about? When you are trying to decide where you want to live, should you go someplace with a high vegan population so you will have like-minded people nearby, or should you settle someplace less vegan-friendly in the hope that you will have a better chance of influencing the people around you toward a more compassionate lifestyle? Is it better to start a family in an attempt to contribute to a new generation with a different view the animals who share our planet, or is it better to just avoid contributing to the human population at all? 

One particular decision that I have recently been thinking about is the choice to actually rescue animals ourselves. Taking in an animal in need feels like a very obvious and concrete way to make a difference. It has occurred to me though that by doing this, I have practically prevented myself from doing many other things that could potentially have a much greater overall impact. I have thought many times how much I would like to volunteer for a large number of different charities, but because I am responsible for the care and well-being of several other creatures, I can't exactly just pick up and travel across the country helping different organizations. As much as I love all of the non-human animals who have come to live with me over the years, I have realized that by doing something that I thought would give me a definite sense of accomplishment I have, in reality, prevented myself from being able to accomplish many other things that could have had a much large effect on the big picture.  

Of course, all of these choices are subjective, and we all have to decide for ourselves what is best for our own lives. None of us can ever know for sure what lies ahead of us, or what impact our lives may have. All we can really do is take into consideration the potential implications of our actions and do the best we can to give meaning to our lives. 

I'll Take It

This has been a pretty unusual Christmas. I'm fairly certain this is the warmest weather I have even seen at this time of year. It's not so great today, but yesterday was absolutely lovely. I know other people want to have snow for Christmas but, as far as I'm concerned, being able to go outside in a tee shirt is about the best present ever.

Also, I wouldn't have believed it but, after years of harassing her, my sister has finally started watching Supernatural! I am way more excited about this than I probably should be. So we watched four episodes yesterday. You could say it's been.......

Time for a New Plan

Lately, my dad and I have been experimenting with the forge and....well....it hasn't been going so great. We can't actually seem to get anything to melt. I had this idea about recycling old silverware, so we tried to melt a spoon. It simply would not melt. After a while it got to a glowing orange color, but it would not actually become liquid, no matter how long we heated it. I though maybe we just couldn't get to the melting point for stainless steel (which I think is around 2,500 degrees) so I tried to melt a piece of actual silver. It burned! How the fuck is that even possible? It got red hot and then, without ever melting, developed this weird ashy looking crust on it and became really brittle. So yeah, once again, it looks like I'm going to have to come up with another new plan. 

I'm half considering trying to heat the silverware to the point that it becomes pliable and then shaping it with a hammer or something. Mostly I just want to come up with something to do so that I won't feel like we completely wasted our time with this forge. 

The Coolest Damn Thing!

My family has never been great about actually giving Christmas presents on Christmas. We general just end up giving each other the presents whenever we get them, as opposed to wrapping them and saving them until Christmas day. This is totally fine with me since, as I'm sure you all know by now, I'm not really into holidays and if it was up to me I wouldn't celebrate most of them at all. Anyway, my sister was kind of stressing out about my gift, because she ordered it online and wasn't sure it was going to get here in time. Again, it doesn't matter one bit to me what day I get or give presents on, but she really wanted it to get here on time. Well, it came yesterday and she decided to go ahead and give it to me then. You're not going to believe what it was.......she got me a custom pendant from an Etsy shop called Old Timey Wimey Stuff. It says "vegan" in Gallifreyan! Is that the most perfect thing you've ever heard, or what? And she put it in a TARDIS shaped gift box that she printed out and folded herself, which is so fucking cute I can't even stand it!

Happy Two Year Anniversary!

I have now been writing this blog for two years, if you can believe it. For the anniversary, I wanted to do something special. Since I couldn't come up with anything special, I decided to do something stupid instead. So here is a list of the best (or worst. I find it hard to tell the difference.) dating advice from my favorite shows.

1- Don't hide your enthusiasm.

2- Take every opportunity to use the word "nethers."

3- Always listen to the Pizza Man-

4- Plan fun activities

5- But leave your options open.

6- Always compliment the other person.

7- Be open and honest about your needs.

"I need to show you something........this body"

8- If you can't declare your feelings for someone, just declare their feelings for you instead

"You love me. No, you love me. You can't take it back. There are no take backs."

9- Buy thoughtful gifts.

10- But not the same thoughtful gift twice.

11- Don't be afraid to use creepy, overly explicit metaphors. 

12- Make sure you understand each other.

13- Try being a walking Freudian slip, like Felicity.
                                            

14- Remember that relationships can be complex

15- Tell the other person exactly how you feel.

16- Don't forget to clean the pipes.

17- Try being ridiculously, overly polite. 

18- Downplay your flaws. 

19- If you think there might be something there, but you're not sure, try beating the shit out of each other.

20- And, most importantly, never forget the most effective pick-up line in all of time and space.

Happy Yule

Today is Yule, AKA the winter solstice. Because it's the shortest day of the year, and therefore the turning point toward lighter days, it is a day for thinking about all of the things we want to bring into our lives in the next year. Some things I hope to gain in the next year are
1- Purpose
2- Motivation
3- Confidence
4- Love
5- Success

Also, here is my favorite holiday song. I hope you enjoy it. 

Not Really

Last night at class, the other girl wasn't there. There were, however, three other guys. My class seems to have become very popular all of a sudden. Anyway, I don't mind having other people in the class when we are working on things I've done before, but when we're learning new things it's infinitely easier when it's just me and the instructor. I feel like when I try to practice new things with someone else who has never done them before either, we both just end up doing them wrong most of the time. I suppose wanting to have the class all to myself forever was a bit unreasonable though. But overall, I suppose it went okay.

I also went to the jiu jitsu class again today. There were a lot less people there than there were last week and there was a lot less going on, but I got a chance to talk to a couple of the guys for a while and they seem really cool. They were also very helpful and taught me several different moves, now if I can just manage to remember how to do them.
 

The Herbivore's Dilemma Part 1: Outreach

For those of us who are not satisfied with simply being vegan ourselves, and who want to make a larger impact on the world, figuring out how exactly to go about that can be quite a challenge. Every animal rights organization has different ideas about what we should be doing to promote veganism and animal rights causes, and half of them seem to conflict with each other. Finding a suitable way to promote the vegan lifestyle is something that I have struggled with for years, and I still haven’t quite worked it out.

I’ve always had such great respect for those people who go out and do outreach, things like leafleting and demonstrations. I’ve always wished that I could be one of those people, but I don’t seem to be able to pull it off. Social interaction is always a bit of a challenge for me (which, I guess, is why I turned to writing as a way to make connections) and the thought of being around large groups of people, and trying to promote something that many of them are sure to be very opposed to, is always rather terrifying for me. I have done it, on a  few occasions. I have done leafleting with Vegan Outreach a few times and even participated in a demo outside of a McDonald’s once. I just never felt that it was something I was good at it though, and I always ended up feeling worse afterward than I did when I started. I always felt that I should have done a better job of interacting with people, and any negative comments I got always seemed to stick with me much more than they should have. At the end of the day, not only did I feel that I hadn’t had the impact that I had hoped to, but I also always seemed to be left with a sense of hopelessness due to the few people I encountered who were blatantly hostile.

So here’s where the dilemma comes in. Is it better to do outreach knowing that you’re not really good at it, and that it makes you look at the world in a more negative way? Or should you try to find some other way to make a difference knowing that it probably won’t be as effective as more direct approaches? Is it better to have a bunch of nervous, disillusioned activists out there handing out pamphlets? Or should we leave it to the people who are naturally cut out for it? For myself, I have decided that it is something that I may do occasionally but, for the most part, I think it’s better left to the experts. I think that a few individuals who have a natural knack for connecting with people are better than a whole army of people like me, who will hand you a flyer but not be able to convince you that it’s worth reading.

Furthermore, if you don’t feel that you are cut out to do activism dealing with the public, but still want to make a difference, what are your options? This is a question that I, personally, have been struggling with for a very long time. As of yet, I have not come up with a fully satisfactory answer. The best advice I can give, is that we should try to find the things that we are good at and use those things in a way that feels meaningful to us. I think we have to completely incorporate our beliefs about animal rights into who we are and allow them to influence all that we do. Then, ideally, no matter what we do we will still have some sort of impact.

If you enjoyed this post, keep an eye out for more posts in this series. Thank you for reading.

This is the article I tried to post at The Flaming Vegan, along with the image I wanted to use, which was taken by my friend, Rachel. 

Stand By Me?

I've been thinking about this, and I really want to do more animal rights related writing. Partly because it was one of my goals for the year that I have neglected, but also just because I think it's very important. Since the whole writing for the Flaming Vegan thing didn't work out, I'm thinking I might just try to make a point to write one animal rights/veganism related post here every week. What do you guys think? Will you stop reading if I start doing some weekly slacktivism here? I'm not talking about posting gory images or going on angry rants (well, maybe occasionally I'll go on angry rants, but I do that sometimes anyway) just writing from an animal rights/vegan perspective once a week. You know, putting the vegan back in Volatile Vegan. Anyway, I think tomorrow I'll go ahead and post the article that (apparently) caused all the controversy.

In case you didn't get the...... joke(?), this is from the movie, Stand By Me. 

I'm Out!

Well, The Flaming Vegan has now rejected my post three times with no explanation as to why. They keep acting like it has nothing to do with the post itself, that it's all about the image, but I'm pretty sure that's a bunch of bullshit.

I got a response to the email I sent asking them about it last night and, basically, they said exactly the same thing they had said in the first email. The only difference was that this time they said it with a rather infuriating tone of condescension. Nonetheless, I decided to give it one more try. Since they kept saying that the issue had something to do with the image I used, I decided to resubmit the post with a completely different image. Well, first thing this morning I got an email saying that the previous revision (the one with the same image, but a better citation) was rejected. This email was exactly the same as the first one though. So I thought, maybe the issue wasn't the citation, maybe it was the image itself. So I chose a totally different image and submitted the post one more time. A couple of hours later I received yet another copy of the exact same email saying this one was rejected as well. 

So yeah, I'm fucking done with them. I'm a fairly flexible person, and I would be totally willing to change the image or rewrite the post (which I'm assuming is what it would actually take) but I'm not going to keep guessing what they want from me. So I'm just going to have to find someplace else to send my animal rights related writing. Oh well. 

Here is the email they sent me, three times. Really fucking helpful, right?

We wanted to write and let you know that we have deleted your post
"The Herbivore's Dilemma Part 1:Outreach"
because it did not meet our quality guidelines. Specifically, it was
removed for one of the following reasons:

This post needs a more appropriate image. Our stock image(s) unfortunately aren't sufficient for your post.

Or, the photo you provided does not meet our aesthetic or is not properly cited at the bottom of your post.

Please upload a sufficient photo and re-submit. We look forward to reviewing it again! Thanks for contributing!

In Case You Were Wondering

Just in case you were wondering what was going on with my post at The Flaming Vegan, it still has not been posted! Apparently there was some sort of issue with the image I chose for it.....? I don't know. They sent me an email saying that it had been deleted and giving several vague reasons as to why it might have been deleted. I fixed the one that I thought was the most likely to be the issue and re-submitted it. Well, that was three days ago and I still haven't hear shit from them. I finally emailed them today and asked them what the deal was, and haven't heard back yet. So yeah, I finally get motivated to write some animal rights stuff again and now I can't get it posted!

A Couple of Things to Add

I just wanted to add a couple of things that I didn't mention in my post from yesterday. 1-In reference to my statement about everyone asking me how much I weigh, no one (guys in particular) are good at judging girls' weight. Part of the reason the guy wanted me to come to the jiu jitsu class was because there is this "90 pound girl" who has no one to spar with. I'm thinking "I don't want to spar with a 90 pound girl either!" Well, it turns out that she actually weighs just slightly more than I do (which is 120, by the way). 2- Several people now have asked me if I want to do a real fight. I always reply "I don't know, maybe." When what I really mean is "Fuck yes!"

The Rules Do Not Apply

Yesterday I went to a ju jitsu open mat class in Fairmont. How this came about was kind of a long, complicated story but basically the guy who runs the place wanted to get more girls involved, so he asked me to come. Anyway, it was an interesting change of pace from kickboxing, and I will probably end up going back.

What I actually wanted to talk about though is that I have noticed something interesting about conversations with people who are involved in martial arts. Some very basic social rules simply do not apply. Pretty much every person I've talked to has asked me 1-how old I am, and 2-how much I weigh. It's not like it bothers me or anything, it just always kind of catches me off guard because most people would never ask those things.

All This Has Happened Before

Several new guys, plus the other girl, showed up for class night. We ended up playing this "game" where we basically just kept kicking each other and whoever didn't return the kick lost a point. It was going fairly well. No one was actually bothering to keep score, but I'm pretty sure I beat this one guy pretty bad. Then we switched partners and I ended up with the instructor. Obviously, I was not going to win, but I was doing alright and mostly managing to keep up with him. He even said that I have really good range on my kicks "now if we could just get you to kick people hard." Anyway, overall it was going well .....until....he tried to knock me down and when I tried to catch my balance I hit him in the eye and knocked his contact out AGAIN! Really?! It wasn't bad enough that I did that once? Or was it just that there needed to be other people there to witness it?

Half-assed Attempts at Being a Writer

I just thought I would let you guys know how motivated I managed to get the last couple of days. Today I finished another post for The Flaming Vegan, which is intended to be the first is a series called The Herbivore's Dilemma. I'll let you know when it gets posted. And yesterday, I actually submitted a shortened version of The Moth Story to a place called Cactus Heart Press. The deadline for the current issue isn't until January 10th, so I imagine it will be a while before I hear anything from them, but I will keep you updated on that as well.

That Is So.....Respectable

To add to yesterday's post, I have one other reason why I'm kind of thinking about trying to finish my psychology degree. That reason is that now I feel like I almost look respectable enough to be a psychologist..... almost. Part of the reason I gave up on the degree in the first place was that I didn't think I would ever be able to use it. You see, about the only interesting thing you can do with a psychology degree (at least as far as I'm concerned) is to actually be a psychologist. Of course that also means going to way more school than I want to. The real issue though was that I thought I would go through all of that hassle for no reason, because I just couldn't imagine anyone wanting me to be their psychologist. I've simply never looked the part. Recently though, I've changed my appearance somewhat and I've realized that at this point, I think I could just about pass for a respectable adult.

Here We Go Again

Last night I was on Pinterest (I should have known better. This always leads to trouble) and I clicked on this pin that had something to do with Carl Jung. It ended up leading me to one of those personality type tests. I have always thought those things were kind of interesting, but they seem to have gotten exceptionally trendy lately, so I never bothered to do one. Anyway, last night I did and it turns out I'm an INTJ. I'm still reading about it, but it seems to be fairly accurate. The real point of this post though, is that now I'm tempted to try again to get my Psychology degree. I always find this shit fascinating and I can read about it forever. Plus, it turns out that Jung had the same personality type that I do. So perhaps I'm just built for it.

I know it's stupid to bounce back and forth so much about this, but I just love psychology and hate school. So what is one to do?

I know, Dean! I know! 

Alas

The last couple of days I've been looking back over some of my various lists of goals, in preparation for my end of the year posts. It turns out that I actually did okay this year, goal wise. I accomplished most of the things on my list for the year, a few things from my overall list, and a several other things that just feel like decent accomplishments. The problem is, it doesn't really seem to matter. No matter how many things I cross off, my life is still pretty much just pathetic. I think about all the things I've done and go "That's pretty good." Then I think about how fucking stupid my life still is and go "Yeah, but...."

Impetus

You know my Flaming Vegan post, well guess what? They put it on the homepage......and paid me for it! So I'm pretty excited about that. It's ridiculous how much more motivation I have to do things if I get any kind of incentive whether monetary, emotional, social, whatever. It's not like I'm going to make a living, or even enough to really make much of a difference at all, writing for The Flaming Vegan. It's just a feeling of appreciation. I mean, if they're willing to give me money, they must like what I have to say. So yeah, I think I might actually stick with it. I even started working on my next post for them today.

 

A Good Decision

I got my new workout DVD yesterday and tried it out this morning. I think I'm really going to like it. It's fairly intense, but enjoyable enough that I didn't feel like I had to suffer through it. Overall, I am quite pleased with my choice. I'm hoping I'll be able to find other Capoeira workouts later on, because I feel like most of what this one covers should be fairly easy to master, and, now that I've watched some videos on it, I really want to learn the more complicated stuff.

I don't know that I'll ever get to the point where I can do this kind of shit, but I'm going to try!

P.S. On a semi-related note, I have now gotten to the point where I can do ten pull-ups, both overhand and underhand. I have been able to do ten underhand ones for a while, but the overhand ones are a bit harder. I finally got it though! Next step- salmon ladder. 

Good Class

I think last night was the most productive class I've had yet. This is partly due to the fact that I was there until almost 10:00 (class is supposed to be over at 8:30). The other girl was there last night and she left shortly after class was supposed to be over, then the instructor and I kept working for over an hour after that.

Anyway, at the beginning of class the other girl and I worked on clinch. This was pretty cool because I had only ever done it against my instructor, so I really had no idea how good I was at it, and it turns out that I'm apparently pretty decent. I think she was actually getting a little pissed because she couldn't get away from me. After that we worked on defending/blocking kicks. I wasn't quite as good at that, but I think I was getting better by the end...I think.


After she left, the instructor and I worked on throwing and defending body kicks, and then kind of spared with it a little. He also taught me this nifty little trick which basically seems like a guaranteed way to knock someone on their ass. Of course this means that I got knocked on my ass several times, before I got it. Also, I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but at some point I got kicked in the throat. It was kind of hilarious actually because it barely even touched me, and it was obviously a complete accident, but for a second I think he thought he seriously hurt me because he jumped back and his eyes got really big until I started laughing. So yeah, pretty good class.

Also, the other girl had been referring to me as "Vegan" but has now started calling me "Fairy". I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's slightly derogatory, so perhaps next time I will blast her my fairy light. 

P.S. My post is up at The Flaming Vegan.

The Prodigal Daughter Returns

I just wrote my first post for The Flaming Vegan in over two years. As some of you may know, I used to write for them all the time, but I stopped. I've been meaning to start again for a long time, and today I finally just did it. Partly because I looked back at my list of goals for the year and found that there were some, including writing for The Flaming Vegan, which I had totally forgotten about. Anyway, I'm going to try to start writing for them on a regular basis again. Apparently the post have to be moderated, so I'll let you guys know when this one is up.  

Funny coincidence, this ^ is the picture I used for my post at The Flaming Vegan (which had a different title). Then I was looking for images related to the prodigal son, and apparently there was something in the story about pigs.....who knew?

Well Now I'm Going to Have to Actually Do Shit

It turns out that next week is the "mid-season finale" of both Supernatural and Arrow. Since, for the most part, these two shows are the things I look forward to most in my weeks, I am going to have to start doing more real-world things to take up the slack. The good news is that we should be putting the finishing touches on my forge this weekend. If that works out, it should give me something pretty interesting to do. What would be really nice is if I could actually have enough of a life that I could stop needing to live vicariously through fictional characters, but I doubt that's likely to ever happen.

Also, it does look like they should be pretty good episodes. Supernatural looks like it's probably going to be fucking heartbreaking (which, for some reason, I consider to be a good thing), and apparently Oliver is going to have a snowy, shirtless, sword fight. So at least they're giving us something good to end on.