human condition~
I cannot believe I only have two more days before I go back to campus D: Not that I don't want to go back. I can't wait to see my friends, and my courses are interesting. I just really don't want to work. The thought of writing more papers makes my physically ill... But baaw, cry moar. C'est la vie! And graduation is not so far off anymore. I want to enjoy the end of my school career while I can, but I don't want to burn out either. The key is to not me so prone to self-pity. It's a character flaw. *shrug* I have to complain less and focus on the good, of which there is much.
Speaking of self-pity (>__>), my PC got a nasty virus the other day and have no idea how it appeared. I didn't go anywhere new and the virus appears to have downloaded itself off a site I go to regularly. I wasn't downloading anything and my antivirus and firewall were up (but it's possible the antivirus was out of date. I use Avast Free edition, and lately it hadn't asked me to update it, so I'd assumed everything was ok. But maybe it was out of date and for some reason didn't inform me?).
So, I tried running a scan, I tried MalwareBytes, and I tried to do a system restore. But the virus latched on to start-up and would freeze my desktop mere seconds after I turned the computer on. Soooo... there was no choice, I had to revert the whole thing to factory settings. SUCK. Luckily, I use Carbonite for back-up, it's a fantastic program, and have been able to get all my files back with little trouble. I am running into some glitches - some files did not restore where I told them to, and even though the computer tells me they exist in the right location, I cannot find them - but hopefully they will work out. I've got a few ideas on how to get around the problem if I can't fix it anyway. So overall, I'm lucky. It was a relatively painless process. The biggest causality is my Sims world is probably toast, but I wasn't going to play again until next break anyway. (Bringing it to school would be ridiculous. I'd be distracted all the time.) I seem to have recovered my music, but I need to download iTunes again and test them to make sure they play. I think I could do that with Media Player regardless, and my dad's saying I should just do that and buy music off Amazon instead of iTunes... I have friends who have lost music after having to wipe their computers like this, because iTunes doesn't let you recover your library. But I know people who say that's not the case too. So... I guess we'll see.
Anyway, crisis averted for now. I decided to go with the latest Avast for antivirus again. Everyone says it's the best after AVG for free software. But AVG doesn't seem to have a free version anymore? I had trouble finding it on the website. Anyway, I had AVG a while ago, and it was really troublesome for me. Avast was so convenient for me by comparison. My one hope is that the virus didn't get through Avast because it's Avast, but rather because it wasn't updated or something... I really don't know. *sigh*
It is really scary when viruses attack. It's like, really? Really? I don't need this added stress. Who needs it?
In brighter news -
Kanna and my mom and I went to a Norman Rockwell exhibit on Wednesday. I got really car sick on the ride up, worse than ever before except for one time, when I was in Japan. That time, we were driving through Aomori prefecture and I was feeling a little sick from the curving mountain roads, but it wasn't until we stopped for lunch and I ate a bowl of katsudon which really didn't go down well that I got badly sick. It was really hard to tough it out on the rest of the trip. On Wednesday, I don't know why I got sick. I'd just eaten before we started driving, but that's not unusual for me. I was bent over reading the GPS for a little while, and I do get sick if I read in the car, but never that badly. I was also sitting in the back seat, which is unusual for me, and felt a bit better when I moved to the front. But, eugh.
The gallery was beautiful. Turned out to be the same one I went to high school, but I really didn't remember it and, anyway, Norman Rockwell is just amazing. I loved it. We spent a couple hours there, but I could have stayed longer, just looking at all the little details. There was an adjacent exhibit on Jerry Pinkney's art, which I'd never seen before but was beautiful. I really admired his depictions of life in the slave era. They were very moving and true-to-life. I think he's a very intelligent artist who cares about his subjects.
I worried Kanna wouldn't enjoy the exhibit. We were going back and forth about what to do on Wednesday, the exhibit or a Japanese market, and both of us kept saying we were happy either way, so we ended up flipping a coin and ended up at the museum. She said she liked it, though, and got some souvenirs. I also got some souvenirs, like an ornament featuring Rockwell's "Golden Rule" painting, which I love. (My favorite Rockwell pieces are the ones about children, though, especially preteens. He really captured what my mom called that "gawky" stage so well.)
Norman Rockwell inspires me to keep working on my own art, and also my writing. I'm nothing special right now, but I'll keep working hard at what I love. He was a popular artist, too, not super intellectual and high brow, but you can easily see all the smarts, all the power of observation and knowledge infused in his art. He's an example of the gold you can mine in any genre, popular or high or otherwise. If you love something and put all of yourself into it, it has merit.
After that, we went to a restaurant called Bizen (備前) which appears to be named after a place in Japan which does ceramic work. We got there at 4 but it didn't open till 5, so we went to a nearby coffee shop to wait. The two guys working there were both rather cute and adorable ^^; There was also a women's underwear store nearby called "Bra and Girl," which, of course, I misread as "Bar and Grill," and the pun is clear. Ha! I love it.
The dinner menu at Bizen is a lot of very traditional Japanese food. Not much yaki-anything. Kanna got agedofu, tuna-yamakake, and mackerel sushi. My mom got veggie tempure appetizer and a kind of fish meal, but I forget what it was exactly. I had a kappa roll and shrimp and veggie tempure. The portions were huge. Kanna was so excited to eat Japanese food that she ate everything and had a little stomachache later, lol. I usually eat much more than her. I couldn't finish my tempure, so it's in the fridge to eat tomorrow! But everything was really delicious. The whole trip was a lot of fun for me.
Today, I woke up with some awful vertigo, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, I was still dizzy, and not feeling well, so I laid in bed until like 5:30 or so. That's really late, really really late. So now it's 3 am and I'm wide awake. But I kept feeling light-headed all night long. Hopefully it's just a dizzy spell that will pass soon.
Lastly, my mom showed me this poem:
"It Is I Who Must Begin" by Vaclav Havel
"It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try -
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
- to live in harmony
with the 'voice of Being,' as I
understand it within myself
- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.
Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost."
It's a very simple, lovely poem that is very true to the human condition. When I read it, I felt like it was expressing the exact thoughts I've been having these past few years. Go, poetry~
Speaking of self-pity (>__>), my PC got a nasty virus the other day and have no idea how it appeared. I didn't go anywhere new and the virus appears to have downloaded itself off a site I go to regularly. I wasn't downloading anything and my antivirus and firewall were up (but it's possible the antivirus was out of date. I use Avast Free edition, and lately it hadn't asked me to update it, so I'd assumed everything was ok. But maybe it was out of date and for some reason didn't inform me?).
So, I tried running a scan, I tried MalwareBytes, and I tried to do a system restore. But the virus latched on to start-up and would freeze my desktop mere seconds after I turned the computer on. Soooo... there was no choice, I had to revert the whole thing to factory settings. SUCK. Luckily, I use Carbonite for back-up, it's a fantastic program, and have been able to get all my files back with little trouble. I am running into some glitches - some files did not restore where I told them to, and even though the computer tells me they exist in the right location, I cannot find them - but hopefully they will work out. I've got a few ideas on how to get around the problem if I can't fix it anyway. So overall, I'm lucky. It was a relatively painless process. The biggest causality is my Sims world is probably toast, but I wasn't going to play again until next break anyway. (Bringing it to school would be ridiculous. I'd be distracted all the time.) I seem to have recovered my music, but I need to download iTunes again and test them to make sure they play. I think I could do that with Media Player regardless, and my dad's saying I should just do that and buy music off Amazon instead of iTunes... I have friends who have lost music after having to wipe their computers like this, because iTunes doesn't let you recover your library. But I know people who say that's not the case too. So... I guess we'll see.
Anyway, crisis averted for now. I decided to go with the latest Avast for antivirus again. Everyone says it's the best after AVG for free software. But AVG doesn't seem to have a free version anymore? I had trouble finding it on the website. Anyway, I had AVG a while ago, and it was really troublesome for me. Avast was so convenient for me by comparison. My one hope is that the virus didn't get through Avast because it's Avast, but rather because it wasn't updated or something... I really don't know. *sigh*
It is really scary when viruses attack. It's like, really? Really? I don't need this added stress. Who needs it?
In brighter news -
Kanna and my mom and I went to a Norman Rockwell exhibit on Wednesday. I got really car sick on the ride up, worse than ever before except for one time, when I was in Japan. That time, we were driving through Aomori prefecture and I was feeling a little sick from the curving mountain roads, but it wasn't until we stopped for lunch and I ate a bowl of katsudon which really didn't go down well that I got badly sick. It was really hard to tough it out on the rest of the trip. On Wednesday, I don't know why I got sick. I'd just eaten before we started driving, but that's not unusual for me. I was bent over reading the GPS for a little while, and I do get sick if I read in the car, but never that badly. I was also sitting in the back seat, which is unusual for me, and felt a bit better when I moved to the front. But, eugh.
The gallery was beautiful. Turned out to be the same one I went to high school, but I really didn't remember it and, anyway, Norman Rockwell is just amazing. I loved it. We spent a couple hours there, but I could have stayed longer, just looking at all the little details. There was an adjacent exhibit on Jerry Pinkney's art, which I'd never seen before but was beautiful. I really admired his depictions of life in the slave era. They were very moving and true-to-life. I think he's a very intelligent artist who cares about his subjects.
I worried Kanna wouldn't enjoy the exhibit. We were going back and forth about what to do on Wednesday, the exhibit or a Japanese market, and both of us kept saying we were happy either way, so we ended up flipping a coin and ended up at the museum. She said she liked it, though, and got some souvenirs. I also got some souvenirs, like an ornament featuring Rockwell's "Golden Rule" painting, which I love. (My favorite Rockwell pieces are the ones about children, though, especially preteens. He really captured what my mom called that "gawky" stage so well.)
Norman Rockwell inspires me to keep working on my own art, and also my writing. I'm nothing special right now, but I'll keep working hard at what I love. He was a popular artist, too, not super intellectual and high brow, but you can easily see all the smarts, all the power of observation and knowledge infused in his art. He's an example of the gold you can mine in any genre, popular or high or otherwise. If you love something and put all of yourself into it, it has merit.
After that, we went to a restaurant called Bizen (備前) which appears to be named after a place in Japan which does ceramic work. We got there at 4 but it didn't open till 5, so we went to a nearby coffee shop to wait. The two guys working there were both rather cute and adorable ^^; There was also a women's underwear store nearby called "Bra and Girl," which, of course, I misread as "Bar and Grill," and the pun is clear. Ha! I love it.
The dinner menu at Bizen is a lot of very traditional Japanese food. Not much yaki-anything. Kanna got agedofu, tuna-yamakake, and mackerel sushi. My mom got veggie tempure appetizer and a kind of fish meal, but I forget what it was exactly. I had a kappa roll and shrimp and veggie tempure. The portions were huge. Kanna was so excited to eat Japanese food that she ate everything and had a little stomachache later, lol. I usually eat much more than her. I couldn't finish my tempure, so it's in the fridge to eat tomorrow! But everything was really delicious. The whole trip was a lot of fun for me.
Today, I woke up with some awful vertigo, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, I was still dizzy, and not feeling well, so I laid in bed until like 5:30 or so. That's really late, really really late. So now it's 3 am and I'm wide awake. But I kept feeling light-headed all night long. Hopefully it's just a dizzy spell that will pass soon.
Lastly, my mom showed me this poem:
"It Is I Who Must Begin" by Vaclav Havel
"It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try -
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
- to live in harmony
with the 'voice of Being,' as I
understand it within myself
- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.
Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost."
It's a very simple, lovely poem that is very true to the human condition. When I read it, I felt like it was expressing the exact thoughts I've been having these past few years. Go, poetry~