Kat’s Pause 

As of yesterday, I am completely unpacked. I got rid of enough stuff to make room for all my treasured material possessions. Yes, it took this long. I dawdle a lot and am very easily distracted. Also I love the internet.

Meds are going okay. They’re a pain to take because I can’t swallow pills, so I have to open up the capsule and eat the contents from a spoon. As for side effects, I’m used to my hands trembling, so a little more isn’t a big deal, and the intermittent nausea is bearable. Yesterday afternoon I felt really strange, but it passed, and with the help of my dear friend Mori I was able to drop off some resumes at the local malls. Things are finally going right: I have two interviews this weekend, one at a store I already like and one at a respectable petites store.

I discovered a new webcomic today, and I’ve decided it’s time to publish an updated list of the comics I now read. So without further ado:

Gamer Comics
Penny Arcade
PvP
VG Cats
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Looking for Group A WoW comic with excellent artwork and delightful characters.

Drama Comics
AppleGeeks
Questionable Content
MegaTokyo My guilty pleasure.
Stuff Sucks A very fun comic.
You’ll Have That Not my favourite comic, but there are a few gems.

Adventure/Surrealist Comics
Sam and Fuzzy My favourite comic because of its stylish art and mind-boggling storylines.
Dresden Codak A close second, only so because of infrequent updates. Astonishingly brilliant comic.
Gunnerkrigg Court My latest find! I read through the entire wonderful archive this afternoon.
Scary Go Round I love this British comic dearly.
Girly An entertaining romp with wacky characters.
Rice Boy Suffers from a poor main page layout, but reading through the pages is easy and the comic will amaze you.

Comics Where Stuff Happens
Diesel Sweeties
Rob and Elliot
Joe and Monkey
Snafu Comics
The Perry Bible Fellowship Hilarious, though often horrifying.

Today I go on Effexor, which sounds more like a destructive robot than something I want to put inside my body. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before my intense dislike of drugs of any sort — I don’t even like having to take vitamins daily — so this is a step I took a long time in taking. Thanks to people like Dooce and the many, many friends and family members who’ve been frank with me about their antidepressant and antianxiety use, I feel comfortable being honest about it with a few of my friends (you, dear reader). I confess, I am really sick of feeling like I need to hide when my body has turned against me. I’ve leaned on no one but Ning for far too long now and that’s been unfair to him as well as unhealthy for me.

The good news is my doctor doesn’t think I have autoimmune disease. We’re putting those tests on hold for a while to manage my mental health, so I’ll do my best not to worry. The anti-anxiety medication should help with that, har har. I’ll try to update my blog more often so that no one thinks I’ve gone and offed myself.

As a side note, I’m becoming addicted to linking things in my blog — ironic considering that’s how weblogs started. All I know is that too often when I’m reading something online, I’ll open up tabs upon tabs to google up more information on an unfamiliar word, phrase, concept or medical condition. So I figure maybe I can save some people the trouble by providing unobtrusive access to information they might want.

to Dave for the Flickr flash thingy gracing my sidebar, which after requiring me to get my hands dirty with simple HTML motivated me to update the rarely-touched space. I’m thinking about choosing a new title; “Katness” doesn’t say much. Ideas?

Kat’s Pause just came to me. Too bad I don’t like puns.

Is this game well known? I have yet to meet a person who hasn’t heard of it, but I suppose the subject doesn’t come up often.

I just learned that a girl I knew in middle school had a baby some time ago. She’s the first that I know of. I wouldn’t have expected her; I know some other girls who seemed like prime candidates.

Apparently everyone I knew in middle school is now a stoner. As 4/20 dwindles into a more sober day, this feels like an appropriate time to find out.

I was sorting through some papers and came across my (very pretty) offer of admission from McMaster last year. I barely looked at it a year ago and I didn’t bother to peek inside now. It stings a little, I guess; sometimes I wonder if I’ve made any good decisions since choosing my high school. I won’t get into details because it’ll just turn into a pity party, and some of them are painfully recent anyway.

Now is a time of unravelling, uprooting, disassembling, and perhaps with time a slow picking up of the pieces. Next week I go on antidepressants because I can’t seem to deal with my own life alone, and as much as I loathe the idea of drugs, nothing else has worked. My health, finances and education are in a tense limbo and the situation is not helped by my constant worrying. (Drugs should help some of my anxiety problems too.)

So here’s where I am now, McMaster. But don’t worry, I’ll be a good student. I always am, no matter what’s spiralling out of control around me.

…is still underway. Last night I shredded everything in my old diary, which I insisted on calling a journal even though its pages speak of little other than crushes on boys. I’m not too sad about this act because I always knew I would destroy them eventually; I had just hoped it would be with fire since fire is cool. But my mother’s new shredder did the job just as well.

A while after my sporadic entries in that red book stopped, I started a new journal for my grade 12 Writer’s Craft class. I was surprised to find myself still writing in it past the end of the course. Soon, though, I started up this blog and eventually found that anything I thought worth saying also felt worth reading. Once I filled the last page of my Writer’s Craft journal, I felt content to publish my musings online. Anything not worth reading wasn’t worth the paper to write it on privately, I figured. Maybe I’m wrong, but this blog is a small affair read by a very limited number of close friends, and there’s not a lot I want to express in a permanent way that I don’t feel comfortable doing here.

I didn’t shred my Writer’s Craft journal. It’s still sitting in my drawer along with various filled notebooks I’ve had since I learned to hold a pen. Now, to attack the small mountains of other papers that have been shelved, stored, or left lying around since I don’t even remember.

I moved out of residence the night before last and it’s been a steady flip-flop between laziness and cleaning/unpacking. I don’t know where all this stuff came from. Surely I didn’t buy that much since September? Anyhow, my room in res had more storage space than my bedroom at home, so I’m trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible that I haven’t touched in 8 months.

It doesn’t help that I’m a packrat and keep the most absurd things — we’re talking clothing tags, ancient pieces of toys from my childhood, a small broken flashlight, graduation caps from years in which I did not graduate, sparkly blue nail polish. Because you never know when you’re going to desperately need sparkly blue nails. Owning blue nail polish and four different kinds of sparkle polish is simply not enough.

Ning wants to get together this week or next, shoot pool or something. That would be nice. Unfortunately, his parents don’t agree with his decision to remains friends with me, so I don’t know how he’s going to get around that. But for now I need to clean up around here and unpack my mountains of stuff before I can feel guiltless about really relaxing in any way, which includes socializing.

The time of year when I start scouring the poetry I’ve written since last summer for something to submit to my city’s teen writing contest. This year will be my last; soon I’ll be too old.

I’m favouring My Little Editor right now, but my friend thinks the more recent April’s Fool is a candidate. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Not a word from Mac yet, by the way.

That horrid WOOHOO song I mentioned before is “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani.

Someday people will look at our current magazines and have the same reaction.

(I hope so, anyway.)

The Good Wife

Yesterday was my first ever attempt at an April Fool’s joke. I think it went pretty well.

In other news, I’m still waiting to hear from McMaster. Please accept me! I’ll be good, I promise.

Dear friends:

As you may know, I have been less than impressed with my first year of university. I’ve applied to transfer schools, but the overwhelming opinion out there seems to be that all universities suffer from mine’s problems — disrespectful students, lack of funding for the arts, etc. Among many other things, this realization has persuaded me to consider that post-secondary education is not for me.

Although this conclusion saddens me, my year here has not been without its benefits. Residence life has been particularly ironic in its lessons: my floormates, with whom you may remember I am less than bosom buddies, have been tireless in encouraging me to pursue my dreams. As we huddled in the lounge watching America’s Next Top Model, I confessed to them one of my oldest wishes: to be a model. I can honestly say that it’s thanks to them that I can share with you the news of my new career path.

After exams, when I’m back in Hamilton, I’ll set about finding an agent. My sister will be able to help me with this, having hired one herself as a dancer. Until then, I’ll scour the internets for useful information, including tips on presentation, fashion and makeup, all of which are still rather foreign ideas to me. If you know of any useful sites, let me know.

I’ll keep you updated with how things go, of course. Wish me luck!