ODETTE, PUERTO ESCONDIDO

Orlando, Florida to Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Leave Orlando on I-75. Take I-10 West. Stop off in Pensacola and say hello to family. Continue to New Orleans, grab some awesome red beans & rice and beignets. Go through Houston and Corpus Christi. Cross border on I-77 between Reynosa and Matamoros. Stop in Tampico to swim in Gulf on Mexico for a bit. Explore Mexico City. Cut to Pacific Coast in Acapulco, swim in Pacific for a bit. Continue on I-200 until Puerto Escondido is reached. Now, meet Delfino's family, learn to surf on the world-class beaches, and spend about 50 bucks on enough "mota" to last a year or two.

I was turning eight years old. I invited the entire female population of my third grade class.

From the moment the parents stopped paying attention, I was shunned. The other girls locked me out of my own bedroom and proceeded to completely trash it. Books were torn, bubble gum was stuck to my ceiling fan, and booby traps were laid for those trying to open the door. I stepped on a pair of scissors slipped under the door and cut the bottom of my foot wide open.

I have yet to have another birthday party.

I fully intend on being a permanent student. After I get my degree in Bookbinding (Art- Studio), I'm going to go back and get my degree in Psychology. Then my Masters in Library and Information Science. Then my Masters in Neuroscience. Maybe a Business minor in there somewhere. I'd also like to get my ASE certification (car mechanic) and welding.

I started using the computer "regularly" at around age 9... when the first Sims game came out. I was only allowed on it for the Sims, and only for an hour a day. My little sister was always right on my tail about it too, saying "I WANNA GO FIRST" but that tapered down after we figured out we could both sit at the computer and spend 2 hours playing together.

From then, my computer use has evolved into a short "IMing friends from school on AOL" phase... then I discovered the rest of the internet. I stuck to gaming websites like Neopets or downloading DLC for the Sims. This naive and laisse-faire downloading of content led me to my next phase of internet use.

I turned 12, I hit puberty, and popups were infecting my computer. You can guess where I spent most of my internet time. I cut that out after about 6 months though. Getting caught at it and having the sex drive near-permanently shamed out of you does that, it seems.

My next phase was right smack in the beginning of the Myspace phase. The Sims and Neopets still lived on in my harddrive and history, but the there were bigger and better things to spend my time on. There were boyfriends to talk to! I was still only allowed on the computer for an hour or so at a time, but I could surreptitiously stretch it because teachers were starting to assign typed homework.

In my sophomore year of high school, I was granted a laptop for Christmas, and my computer/internet use has been through the roof ever since, much to my family and husband's chagrin. Myspace has long since been abandoned for the lush fields of Tumblr and Facebook. I shop, do my homework, blog, and just generally peruse the internet to my heart's content. My bookmarks are primarily school or knowledge-attainment related, with a vast selection of fanfics, blogs, comics, and shopping opportunities thrown in. I still play the Sims occasionally, but now it's the Sims 3 instead of the original.

My computer and internet use has evolved quite mightily, but I reckon it has still stayed the same at heart.

Dermatophagia. I've had dermatophagia since I was seven. If you look it up on Google Images, my fingers used to look worse than some of the images there, and that's saying something.

It's a form of OCD and self-harm all rolled up into one gross little package, and I'm doing my best to kick it.

I've been using Sally Hansen's Cuticle Massage Cream to try to grow some of my finger tip flesh back, and it's working really well. I've also painted my nails black, so picking at my hands makes a more visible impact and I'll remember to cut it out when I see that. When I pick at them and notice myself doing so, I have a pack of heavy duty bandaids and some neosporin that I whip out and wrap my fingertips with.

They've healed up quite a bit in the last few weeks of keeping care of them. I don't have any hard ridges to mindlessly pick at anymore, and you can't tell that my hands are disgusting unless you look really closely.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep this up.

"Under Pressure" Queen & David Bowie
"Crazy Train" Ozzy
"It's My Life" Bon Jovi
"Heavy" Collective Soul
"I'll Make a Man Out of You" Disney Soundtrack
"I Miss You" Blink-182
"Live Before You Die" Social Distortion
"Going Down In Flames" 3 Doors Down

Waves hit Navarre Pier hard during Hurricane Ivan's approach: Navarre Beach, Florida

As a lifelong coastal Floridian, I have experienced a literal shit-ton of "natural disasters" in the form of hurricanes. My hometown is fairly regularly decimated by storms that destroy every house in a 200 mile area.

The worst one was Ivan, on September 16, 2003. That name is still spoken with something like fear and reverence in my hometown. It's essentially The Storm That Shall Not Be Named. Almost everyone within 2 miles of waterfront lost their homes and everything they didn't take with them during Evacuation. Some people didn't evacuate their waterfront homes, and they were swept away with the rest of their belongings.

My family never evacuates. We're a little bit too far from the water to need to worry about extreme flooding, and our house is pretty sturdy so it doesn't go anywhere. But during Ivan, we abandoned the tradition of boarding up and staying put in order to ride out the storm with friends. We went to a local warehouse owned by our family friends and hunkered down there. It ended up being like a very large 2 family slumber party during a really scary thunderstorm. We all slept under desks in the office. When we got up in the morning (I don't think any of us really slept), we opened the front door to the still-howling rain so we could get breakfast in one of the buildings across the complex. We walked single file to the building with the food, almost getting taken out by debris and a flying Winnebago on the way. We ate grits, bacon, and eggs all mixed together in a wondrous meal called "Mess", and then we trekked back to our office in order to pack up and see if we could go home.

We couldn't. The roads were blocked with destroyed 30 ft pine trees and bits of houses. We stayed in the warehouse for 2 more days before the radio said we could go home, living off MREs and bottled water.

We were some of the lucky ones... our houses weren't harmed at all. A few shingles blew off, but that was it. Once my family got home, it was more MREs and bottled water for two weeks. Once, the National Guard made us dinner at a nearby church. We didn't get power back until October and went back to school and work almost an entire month after the storm.

Hogwarts James, Lily and Sevvy

Harry effing Potter. Harry Potter wasn't my first big kid book, it didn't turn me into a reader, it didn't give me friends. Harry effing Potter saved my life.

I'm a sufferer of dysthymia and major depression. That means that I'm sad all the time, with periods of being really intensely sad interspersed throughout. I was suicidal from 7th grade through 10th grade (That's 2002 to 2006, people). Quite frankly, some days the only thing that kept me from blowing my brains out or jumping out a tall window was that I didn't know what happened to Harry yet. It was a miserable, no good, very bad existence and not having read the 7th book yet was the best excuse I had for not killing myself.

When Deathly Hallows came out, it didn't magically cure my depression, but it did make me believe in the existence of love again. I believed in magic again. Harry made me feel like there was something a little bit bigger worth living for. Severus taught me that people go on living, even when it seems like they have nothing left to live for. Ron taught me that even the worst arguments can make your relationship stronger.

Harry Potter saved my life and my faith in the world.

Where I live, it hasn't snowed a single flake in fourteen years. But I reckon that if by some freak accident it decided to snow in Florida, I would dive out into it and make the most of it. Snowmen (I've never seen one in real life), snow angels (ditto), and most of all... snowball fights. The closest I've ever come to a snowball fight was when it snowed 2cm while I was on vacation in Georgia.

Seriously, Florida... come on. Snow already.

No consequences, huh? I'll assume by "no consequences" we mean that anybody who dies respawns a few minutes later, any property destroyed repairs itself, and all money stolen gets paid back by some mysterious government agency within the hour? Oh, and nobody but me remembers anything about it the next day?

I'd go on a Grand Theft Auto spree across the entire country. Robbing banks, stealing cars, hijacking planes, and making Evel Knievel jumps over the Grand Canyon in Rolls Royce's.

Hells yeah.

Estadio Saprissa Iron Maiden

Heavy metal picks me right up when I'm feeling gloomy or sad or just plain messed up. Don't really know why, but it sorta gets into your chest and picks you up by the sternum and shakes you a bit, saying "Get with it! There are better things!" Old school metal is the best for this, I think. My "Feel Better Metal" playlist has got some Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Black Sabbath... and some newer stuff like Mastodon, Pantera, and Priestess... and some really new stuff like Disturbed and Trivium.

Heavy metal makes me feel alive!!!

Milkshakes After Deathly Hallows
I've been craving a milkshake for longer than you know.

Volusia Time!
The husband is fixing up his old Suzuki Volusia for me so I can be a bad ass biker too. This week, he's going to be replacing the battery, fixing the exhaust, and performing a much-needed oil change. This will make the bike ride-able, but it'll still be rusty and in desperate need of a paint job.

Skritter
Skritter, a Chinese character practice website, has a challenge for this month: 20 minutes of practice a day for a whole month and you might get a Wacom tablet. At this point, I'm not even in it for the tablet. I've learned a lot in the last 5 days I've been practicing and it's easily becoming the highlight of my mornings (at least when Terry's not there).

Thanksgiving
Isn't that this Thursday? Oh, good. That means that the husband and I actually get to eat full meals for once! And on somebody else's dime, no less. Huzzah!