The Topic of Great Randomness

[Trialia]

Trialia: Voices? Like hallucination voices, or first-sign-of-madness voices, or just friendly ones like Tiffany Aching's Third Thoughts? (From A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett)

EDIT: I just realized I've been spelling your name wrong for a very long time, Trialia. I thought that it was "Tri-al-a" but now I realize that it is "Tri-a-li-a". Sorry!

Mixture of delusional voices and the Third Thoughts. I have rapid-cycling bipolar disorder with psychotic features, and the voices are the main one of those...

Sometimes I can encounter a very strong fictional character and she (or he - usually female) will sort of latch onto my primary voice, the loudest in terms of personality, and I'll have conversations with them in my head that have nothing to do with fanfiction.

I still remember the time I had concussion and was sitting in the ER getting lectured by Laura Roslin about it, and flailing for my notepad to write down what she was telling me, and not being allowed to because the doctor said I had to stay quiet, and Katja took my bag away from me so I would. *g* Actually, that little occasion did turn into fic, but it was her yelling at Adama, not at me... It's mostly small things. I hate silence in my head sometimes, because it can get so loud, but that's why I meditate: to try to ease up on my dislike of that blank sound.

Oh, no worries Most all the people who know me just call me Tria anyway, even offline (only my family and people who need to use my legal name don't).

[EricG1793]

Many posts ago, we talked about sitting in silence.... Well, I had a fantastic experience over the summer. My godparents have a membership at an Italian club that has a little beach on a large lake. My mom and I went swimming up there a few times. Once, it was a really nice, warm, and sunny day. They have a diving raft 80 or so feet from the shore. The water temperature was perfect (I like warmer water), but I decided to sit on the raft for a while. I sat there for a half hour of 45 minutes, looking around, soaking up the vitamin D. The air was fresh and there was a pleasant, gentle breeze running through my hair. And as I sat there, I had this sensation of being one with my surroundings -- I was on top of the raft, and I moved however the raft moved. The raft was on top of the water, and moved however the water moved. The water moved however gravity, rotation, wind, pressure, etc. wanted it to move. I was so incredibly in touch with my surroundings... it was so calming, and peaceful, to be sitting by myself out there on the raft. The overall experience and my extreme happiness with everything is virtually indescribable. Throughout my experience, I was reminded of the YW world, of major elements working together, being one with the universe, going with the flow, etc. I left happier than I had been in a long, long time, and I had a certain light, airy feeling in my chest that I used to have after spending hours outside playing with friends, having a good time with my family, or during recess in Elementary school.

The next time I went there, I attempted to repeat the experience, but I didn't get as much out of it... probably because it was only partly sunny. But it was still a pleasant experience.

Wow, that was a long rant.... Moving on.

I had my Geometry final this morning, and that was a piece of cake. I finished about a half hour early.... I love Geometry, and my teacher was fantastic. I'm going to miss that class. I have History and Spanish 2 finals tomorrow. My Spanish teacher was filling in for another teacher on maternity leave, so he's going back to the job he had before he came to my school... who knows if I'll ever see him again. He was a great teacher, too. I'll also be sad to be out of my History class... I hate History class itself and the huge amount of work involved, but the teacher and my classmates were wonderful.

Well, onward to English 2, Biology, Spanish 3 with my Spanish 1 teacher who's pretty good, and Advanced Computer Applications (continuing what we learned in Foundations of Technology with Office programs and whatnot).

[NickRyan]

Silveredblue: Ya that was I meant but it was early and I was tired. I'm not mad you thought it was funny. Also that wouldn't make much sense even if I meant it since you weren't hurt so how could I be glad you were.

kk: my mom didn't think it was amazing she was freaking out. also after he got grounded again he started leaving little dead bodies all over the yard.

My other cat, Nicky, has a habit of sitting on my lap while I'm on the computer and it makes it hard to type because he is sitting on just one of my arms.

[SilveredBlue]

Nick and Nicky? lol.
I know, I was kidding.

Eric: That sounds so..peaceful. I think your sitting-in-silence moment trumps the others already listed! Geometry: ugh. I liked parts of it, but I didn't do as well as I could have on the test because I had forgotten certain things about ratios and non-Euclidean geometries, so it was disappointing.

I had one of those peaceful moments a while ago, when my family had gone camping by a lake. It was surrounded by massive rocks, some 15 feet tall and twice as broad, and I climbed up to the top of one and sat for half an hour in the warm sun looking at the lake. It was one of those "life-is-good" times. Course I had a sunburn later, because I forget the sunscreen all the time like Nita, but it was worth it.

Trialia: Bipolar disorder? That's seriously no fun! I feel for you. You need a personal shield-spell or something!

[EricG1793]

^ Wow, sounds like your moment was as good -- if not, better than -- mine. I agree, it's a "life-is-good" time. It makes me think of being free of our restrictive world with school, work, home, money, all that great stuff.

Anyone ever read posts at tynan.net? That guy has a very interesting outlook on life. While my mind thinks that I have a wonderful life now, my soul envies him.

[Trialia]

I had one of those peaceful moments a while ago, when my family had gone camping by a lake. It was surrounded by massive rocks, some 15 feet tall and twice as broad, and I climbed up to the top of one and sat for half an hour in the warm sun looking at the lake. It was one of those "life-is-good" times. Course I had a sunburn later, because I forget the sunscreen all the time like Nita, but it was worth it.

I love those moments. Sometimes I'll just get on a train going from the city into the countryside and get off it wherever, without making definite plans beforehand, and spend the afternoon away from everything. It's calming.

Trialia: Bipolar disorder? That's seriously no fun! I feel for you. You need a personal shield-spell or something!

*chuckle* Oh, I really do. But BPD is not the worst of it. Well, mentally it is, but I also have hypermobility-type Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, fibromyalgia syndrome (severely, I'm in the 30% statistic of worst-affected for my country ), asthma, migraines, Raynaud's syndrome and - though not quite an illness - mild Asperger's with OCD features. Fun, hmm? *g* Nah, the really frustrating part is balancing all the meds against each other, what will help one condition without worsening another. I can't have tranquilisers because they make me manic, for one thing, which seems crazy...

[96bookworms]

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!!! Oh my gosh South Africa was Amazing!!!!!We went to Kruger National Park and we saw everything you could possibly wish to see and then some. We saw all of the Big Five (top 5 animals that you try to see.....Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Elephant and Rhino) The only REALLY rare one is the leopard.....one person we talked to has been going to the park for 15 years and has never seen a leopard, and we saw one about an hour after we got into the park!!!!!!! You generally also don't see to many of the others but we were there for 4 days and we saw probably 50 buffalo including one to be so young it was still wet!!!!!! also we saw TONS of elephants-5-10 big herds, and tons of solitary males.....we only saw one leopard (which is still very lucky) and we saw 20-30 white rhinos.....we saw about 5 lions, all male, 2 together and the others separate..... we got to sleep in a hide one night and the lion roaring kept me awake the whole night ....heheheheheh we also saw a cheetah, while we were looking at a herd of elephants, which was pretty cool

We also stayed on my uncles farm, and I got to see my cousins for the first time in several years......we didn't do much together because there is such and age gap (Andre, who's the oldest, is 35.....im 13) My little cousin's son, Wiem (ve-um) is three and he is ADORABLE!!!! I met my other cousin's new wife (not that new, but new to me.....)she was also really nice.On the last day there I got to ride (and drive) a 4wheeler, which was great too. My one cousin's niece by marriage (or my cousin by marriage's niece) is 13, and we had a great time comparing the USA to SA it turns out Twilight is a big thing over there too.....

The plane trip was pretty good too.....there were almost a thousand movies, and some music, and some TV shows, and some games too.....I watched Aliens in the Attic, which was pretty funny, and I watched a little TV (we don't have tv at home.....) and I tried to sleep, and that's about it.....the plane food on the way there was disgusting (we ordered vegetarian meals) We had burned vegetables and rice for dinner, no dessert, and the other people had cheese pizza and cookies. NOT FAIR On the way back though, the food actually tasted good we had pasta, and best of all.....fanfare please.......a chocolate brownie (needless to say, that didn't help me get to sleep.....but the best part of the plane trip was looking out the window in the middle of the night and discovering Orion!!!!! I was sooooooo excited!!!!! (that's the only constellation I recognize.....)

I tried to read all of the posts while I was gone, but I gave up afterI had been reading for over an hour.....I had about 8 and a half pages to go.....what I did see.....
Trialia: Congrats on your new flat.....

Lazy Leopard: You went to Australia? lucky!!!!! I envy you.....

The rest of the stuff I didn't right names down for...The new Crestomanci book sounds GREAT! I can't wait to read it!!!! I just started the Discworld series, i'm almost done with the color of magic, but I bogged down, because of all my extra work from while I was gone....All the blue food sounds great, and I makes me think of Percy Jackson too.was it wolf who got a new puppy? If it isn't I apologize. We have a Springer Spaniel puppy named Bell who is just adorable. She was staying with a friend of mine, who sent me a picture of Bella (who has unboundless energy) sleeping with Kacey (whoe was a 15 year old Black lab who basically couldn't hear or see, and had a tumor, and bad hips, and.....need I go on? ) Anyways, she and Bell were curled up together.....it was adorable. On a sadder note, they had to put Kacey to sleep the day we got back from SA. We let them keep Bella an extra day to help them ease into it. She was older than my friend, and his little sister. A funny story was when Bella jumped over the kiddie gate and chased their cat allaround the house...

On a totally random note, does anybody know what Smarties are? The chocolate ones, not the candy ones. I found that nobody here knows what they are.....it's frustrating....

I just thought of something else ( do I win the Longest post award?) There was this awesome soap in South Africa called 7de Laan. (7th lane) It was really funny, really cool, and really, really romantic. For example, on the last day there was this Big thing going on. Okay.....I'll try to explain it. There are these 3 characters, Paula, San-Mari, and Angus. Paula and Angus were going out for a long time, but then they broke up, and Angus and San-Marie got together. After a while, Angus and Paula realize that they still have feeling for each other, and they, well, you get the picture.....and of course, they don't tell San-Marie. One day, San-Marie tells Paula (did I mention that they share a flat) that she used to think she and Angus were doing something, but now she's gotten over it and she trusts her, and Angus completely. She also says that she wouldn't be surprised if there were wedding bells soon.....well, Paula almost chokes on her juice and backs away guiltily. Later that day San-Marie walks in on them (Paula and Angus) doing, lets say, certain things.....and thats where it ends.Obviously. And now I won't get to see it for another few years.


Well, now that I hope to be nominated for the Longest Post Award, (is there even such a thing?) I should probably be finishing.

Signed, a cheerfully, jolly-ly insane bibliophile

[estar9821]

Has anyone ever wondered about my location? Gliese581D? Well, it's an exoplanet (planet outside our solar system) orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581 about 15 times closer to the star that Earth is to the sun. However, the planet is in it's star's habitable zone (temperature where liquid water can exist) because the star is much dimmer and cooler than our sun. It is 20.4 light years away, and it has about 7 times the mass of Earth. Scientists speculate that it could be a potentially life bearing planet. It has too much mass to be purely rocky, like Earth, but it could have planet wide oceans, making it the best candidate for a water world.

Now: who knew that before I explained? I just wanna see who else is a space nut...

[Trialia]

96bookworms: Yes, we have Smarties here. I always loved the blue ones best.

estar: To be honest, I hadn't actually noticed your location... and it kind of always annoys me when people put something that isn't their actual Earth location in that field. Isn't that kind of stuff supposed to be for one's signature? :/

[SilveredBlue]

Wow 96bookworms! I loved reading about your vacation; sounds like it was a blast!
Estar: Yes, actually I did wonder! I never got around to asking, but now that you explained....that's very clever. So, I take it you're an inhabitant of this water world, then?

Squee! We went to the library and I finally have new books! Off to read Dragon and Soldier when I should be doing literature...

*defends against guilty concience* (sp?) I'll read just ONE chapter and then I'll finish my questions.

Third Thoughts: (yeah, right.)

[Wolf]

Oy! Okay, I'm going at attempt to jump in here.. ^_^

So, while I was sitting at dinner... maybe Sunday? It hit me that I knew exactly the place where I've been at a complete... peace. My dad was going on about the sixteen million things we were gonna do this summer, and he mentioned canoeing and kayaking. And yeah, it's cool and all... and then a memory hit me. Me in a kayak, after I sped down the river (I'm super fast in the kayak... I'm like a bullet)... and I'm just floating down, relaxing... and completely at peace.

As I've said to Trialia before.... BUBBLE!!!! I need to be in a bubble to protect myself from the really stupid things I do... but Trialia... buuuuubbbbblleeeee. And a snuggle. =)

96bookworms- I know what Smarties are! Also... your post is insane. But entertaining. ^_^

Estar- I knew! I knew! I remember I was like, a 10th or 11th grader in highschool when they came out with the information... I swear I clipped it out of the paper and brought it to school to show my friends. Needless to say, I was hyper and ecstatic and they... were not. =P

Trialia (and whoever else was talking about this)- aahh! I love making up stories, and continuing them every night. It's so wonderful. My ipod really helps a lot; when a "danger" song comes on, something terrible happens, and often times I have to hit the "back" button so I can hear the song again... because I'm just replaying one scene over and over in my mind. Heehee. My ipod battery runs low mainly because at night I search for the "right" song to fit the mood of the current story. Days later, when I remember the whole thing in my head in an instant, I think, "Man! I should've written that down!" and of course it would be waaay too extensive.

I feel like I was gonna write something else, but everyone's posts are so much and this post is long now... and there's so many things we're talking about... ahh! It's too much!!

Oh, one last thing.....
96bookworms...........

PLEASE TELL ME YOU TOOK PICTURES!!!??????????

[illiriam]

ohmigosh bookworm. I am so jealous of your post. And excited for you because you are really lucky to have experienced that.
I second wolf's hope for pictures. Vehemently.

I wish I could remember what peace felt like. haha. There is always something going on at my house, and the only time I can block it out is when I am reading. While that is peaceful in a way, its not a meditative kind of peaceful, where I can clear my mind. Although according to some people, it shouldn't be that hard to clear.

Trialia, good for you for keeping up with medication and your spirits! My sister has BPD, so I have seen what that can be like. It must be hard though sometimes. Hope the meditation helps.

Funny bit about cats since they were brought up earlier. My cat Oreo liked to play with mice. He was good at catching them, but he liked to toy with them, and wasn't very good at keeping them. We spent more time trying to catch frantic mice when he got tired of them than he did playing with them. And our other cat Lucky likes to catch bullfrogs and bring them to us as presents. At least we know that he likes us?

EDIT: I totally forgot what I had wanted to post!
The Poe Toaster! The mysterious stranger who, for the past sixty years, has visited the grave of Edgar Allen Poe in Baltimore and left a bottle of cognac and three red roses. Until this year. Poe's birthday was the 19th, and no Poe Toaster.
The "torch was passed" in the early nineties, and a younger man took over (possibly the original toaster's son) so I don't see much of a reason for it to have stopped. A tradition has ended, and not many even knew it existed.
So now you know.
PS. Its easy to google and find info about the Poe Toaster and why no one bothers him when he visits the poet.

[Lazy Leopard]

Locations: Yeah, I know it's best (particularly for younger folks) not to give out too accurate a location, but I prefer to see something genuinely geographical and at least fuzzily accurate, like the name of a country (if it's not too large) or a state (where the country's half a continent), rather than some random rambling.

At some point I got Gliese 581D and Sigma 957 cross-linked, and though it was a Babylon 5 reference. Glad that's straightened out.

Australia: Well, my sister and her family live in the hills just outside Perth, Western Australia, and I have to visit them from time to time. My mother and my brother live just outside Nairobi, Kenya. They need visiting, too. It's a hard life.

Leopards: They're the one big cat species (at least in Africa) doing fairly well (or at least not too badly). Lions are suffering badly from growing human populations, and cheetahs have always had a hard time of it, but leopards seem better able to adapt. Some of it's down to their being fairly solitary, and a lot of it's down to their being almost entirely nocturnal. That last also makes them much the hardest to see, which is why they've got a reputation for being very rare.

[96bookworms]

Oh! Oh! Oh! I know about Gliese!!!I read a really cool book called every soul a star that mentioned it, and then while I was in South Africa I snagged a copy of National Geographic (December 09) titled Are We Alone? Immediately I was intrigued, so I persuaded my parents to buy it, saying that I was dieing for lack of new reading material.....(which was true)anyways, there were 2 really cool articles about exoplanets, and they mentioned Gliese a lot.

sorry about the insane post earlier, I'm still suffering from jet lag. I'll try to post some pictures as soon as I can.....how exactly do you add a picture?

[Wolf]

bookworms, here's the easiest way, i think.... make a photobucket account... upload the pictures... give us a link to your photobucket. ^_^

I remembered what I was gonna say! SilveredBlue, the reason I asked about your location in reference to Pasadena is because (as kk will attest to) I am a HUGE Star Trek fan... and the guy that plays my favorite character... (actor Wil Wheaton) lives there. Teehee. My mom also has a friend that lives in California, but unfortunately she lives like 4 hours away. Yeahh, I'm not a crazed fangirl or anything...

I do kinda agree with the locations thing, except for when I really start to get to know someone... then it's cool to know where they are, in case we ever want to meet each other. To be absolutely frank, once your location is out of the states, I just generalize you. =P Knowing where you are in the UK is cool though, since I do have another friend there... lol. But as for me, besides giving you my actual town name, there's not much more I can tell you besides I live on the Jersey side of Philadelphia... which I will proudly tell anyone.

GAH!!! My ipod had such crap songs every time I chose shuffle! Finally Bob Dylan came on. Oh yeah, not gonna change it now. =)

Okay, last bit of TOTAL RANDOMNESS. Maybe you non-staters can tell me this, cuz a lot of the people that work at my college's dining hall are from other countries. So I was sitting there eating lasagna today, with my video ipod on the counter. The dining hall lady asked me a question, and i took out my headphones to talk to her. She kindly repeated her question, which was to point and ask me if that was a hot pocket. I looked down at my plate, which was yellow and red and I looked up with the reply, "Nah, it's lasagna." She said, no, that's not what she meant... and indicated my ipod. I. Um. What? She asked me where I got it, and I was just like... "Uh... my ipod? I dunno... probably the Apple store... or... Amazon has really good prices on ipods, too...." And a bit disturbed and highly confused, slowly plugged my headphones back into my ears and went back to my food.

iPod? Hot pocket??! What???????????????????