Odditude

I am exhausted. I went to work this morning and after an hour, gave up and came back home. My feet hurt, my shoulder hurts, my head hurts and my stomach is not happy with my food choices as of late. However, on that note, despite some hijinx, last night was great!

After all the thinking and planning, it was decided that we would go to the Weird Al concert. It was Ndies’ bday so we dragged him along and we joined by A&J, Milady & S! and Kintair. It was a rocky start and as I talked with Ndie, we determined that the problem was that sometimes we let D take the initiative for planning and really, it doesn’t often work out, so we just gotta smack ourselves and we know better. I found a new Fairy artist to keep in touch with and I bought some really cool postcards with Amy Brown and another new artist (for me) Myka. I thought I did really good all night. I had my bottle of water and a large corn dog. And that was it. And because the lineups were long on the way home, we didn’t even stop at a drive thru. Whoohoo!

Weird Al rocked. Despite the lack of seating (which has strongly encouraged me to not want to go to the other two concerts I wanted to go to), I was still able to actually see him on stage despite my far away position. He also had a screen up which showed clips, him on stage and videos. He came back for an encore, which was fabulous. It was 2+ hours long and I stood the whole time. My feet were killing me by the end and it took a lot of willpower just to keep walking. This morning they were still a little sore and I definitely do not want to go for a long walk today…

I am not sure why my shoulder is hurting though. I wasn’t even carrying my backpack on that shoulder unless I hurt it in the morning when I was carrying all the stuff for the pot luck. Which is why I didn’t eat much on the grounds last night. I was stuffed from lunch. It was so good and it was worse than usual for leftovers. The fridge was literally filled with leftovers. It was a lunch to say goodbye to two of our staff who are left this week. So sad too since these were the hard working staff that did little things that really helped out. This morning we were reminded of them as people were like ‘where’s this, why is this locked’ etc because it was all stuff that is usually done by them. Sighhh. I will miss them.

I read the last Harry Potter this weekend. Supposedly 8 out of 10 people have either read Harry Potter or seen the movie. I am very glad that I am part of the majority. On Friday, I headed to the mall at 11:45 pm and picked up the book at midnight. Read some until 1:30, then got sleep, read some more, had lunch with a wonderful friend, talked with D and finished the book by Saturday night. Wow. I loved the ending and I am glad that she remembered that it is a kid’s book. The ending could have gone either way and the last few chapters kept varying back and forth, but the ultimate ending pleases me. While I was reading I could even imagine the movie and I am so excited for the final two movies to come out.

Ndie, D and I all saw the movie last Tuesday and it rocked as well. It could have been better if the original director had done it, but it was a good movie. I enjoyed seeing it and because of the movie, I cared a little more about Sirius dying (which I was one of the rare people who didn’t care one way or the other about his death in the book).

I am so glad that the temperature let up for a few days and that a breeze has returned. It was so nice to fall asleep the last two nights and yesterday I didn’t even put on the fan so it was a quiet night too.

I am reading a book called ODDitude right now and it is one of those self-help books. It has a really good statement in it that I wanted to share.

Every time you meet someone, you always have a choice. You can either learn from them or judge them. But you can’t do both. When you choose one, you eliminate the possibility of the other.

I think this is very true. And I know I try very hard to choose to learn. I am not perfect and sometimes there is nothing better than a judgefest about thick ankles and such, but when I actually meet someone, I do try to learn about them and get to know their story. I have friends who are very different from me and from each other. Some are riskier, some live different lifestyles, some are on a different financial path, etc. My dear friend DS is definitely on a different and riskier path in life. Things she chooses to do are not things that I would do. But rather than judge her and declare her path a waste, I always try to listen to her and find out why she chose this path and what she wants from it. I admit it is not a path for me, but that doesn’t make it a wrong path. My good friend N has switched paths with me. When we met, I was the carefree one who was off doing odd things and such and she was tied to a house, a career, etc. Now I am the one with a house and a career and she is off traveling the world whenever she can. She works to travel, while often I work to live. I respect her way of life for her. I am not at a point in my path to join her (though I want to and I am saving up to do so with her someday), but her path isn’t wrong and every time we talk, I learn something.

Anyway, the point was just to recognize that I have many varied friends and I am proud that I call all of them friends. Each one teaches me something because I choose to have that relationship with them. I just want to say Thank you all for being my friend.