* tiny but powerful *

I think I'm all better! Yesterday I woke up and was amazed that I could roll over in bed. This morning, I could even do my back stretches (which involves my head being upside down). Yay for being better! If only my back would follow suit... :) Thanks for all your prayers!

Ah, Soto is alive again. Spring Break is over...how sad.

The past few days have been stressful, but I think it's getting better (or at least I'm getting better at coping with it). I'm on antivertigo medication, which seems to be helping, although I'm not exactly going around testing its effectiveness ("Let's see if I can make myself nauseated again!" Um, no). The medicine makes me tired, though, as I was warned. So I've pretty much been lying around and sleeping and groaning from back pain. That night when I had to sleep sitting up really did a number on my lower back (which is generally problematic anyway). But now at least I've figured out how to get from sitting up to lying down without getting nauseated! Very exciting. I can lower myself slowly so that my head is still oriented mostly upright, prop my head up with a pillow so that it's almost 90 degrees from my body (this may sound painful, but it's really less painful than sitting up with back pain or wanting to throw up all the time, trust me), and then over the course of many minutes, adjust the pillow incrementally so that it's eventually under my head instead of behind it. This has worked almost every time, as long as I don't get too careless and move too fast. Yay for resting!

Thanks for all your prayers, everyone. I made it to Easter service this morning at The River, which was awesome. Curtis Chang gave a message on "A New Ending" which reminded me a lot of The Sacred Romance and some things that I learned before/during/through writing my testimony* for Testimony's 2003 Christmas Show. I think Curtis has grown a lot as a speaker (and I've grown a lot in responding to him), despite all his corny references to Star Wars and Despair.com. ;) It really is true that, even in the midst of pain or sickness or suffering, we can be comforted by the reminder that God is there IN it -- because Jesus came to experience it and ultimately to conquer it. How amazing, that even death cannot win!

That's the new ending, indeed. :)

BPPV :(

I can't even lie down anymore -- that "nap" earlier was a bad idea. The world started spinning again even though I SLOWLY laid down COMPLETELY flat, and then I was nauseated for several hours. I only just now felt okay enough to have a little dinner. I'm not daring to lie down anytime soon. =P I hope I can get through the night so I can see a doctor in the morning...

I woke up with a weird vertigo problem this morning. :( Turning to lie on my side made the world start spinning. But lying down flat was okay. And sitting up was okay. I've been alright walking around upright today, but any tilting of the head makes me dizzy again. What is going on???

There's lots to update on from this week, but no time to do that right now. I'm going to try to nap, but I'm kind of scared to lie down again. =P

Happy Good Friday (well, not exactly a "happy" day, but the happy comes later this weekend!).

How did it get to be Wednesday so soon?? That means tomorrow is Thursday, and Thursday is when I leave for Chicago!

Things to do over Spring Break:
- visit Erin! YAY!
- return to DL rehearsals (finally)
- finish short paper (my prof is giving me until the end of break)
- sleep
- hang out with mom and brother
- go apartment-hunting with Melisa
- work on the Veritas application
- respond to the anonymous commenter
- shop for a laptop
- apply to graduate (!)

Apparently, my digestive system cannot handle beef stir-fry (or maybe beef in general) from Wilbur Dining.

About a month ago, I had eaten beef stir-fry for dinner, and by the end of RUF I was in a lot of pain. I went back to lie down and eventually threw up several times. But I didn't know exactly what caused it that time -- it could've been the beef, or anything else in the stir-fry, or possibly even the ice cream I had afterward. So I wasn't sure.

Last night, I actually didn't get any beef stir-fry... but Jenn did. :-P I was peacefully having my smoothie and cereal, when Jenn convinced me to try a few bites of the tri-tip beef from her stir-fry. (Okay, that was peaceful too.) I even expressed my hesitation to her due to the aforementioned Bad Experience With Beef Stir-Fry (BEWBSF), but I figured that I wasn't *100%* sure it had been because of the beef. So I (dun dun dun) had a couple bites.

I was actually fine for the next couple hours, but when I tried to take a nap around 10pm, I noticed that my stomach hurt. :( And it quickly got bad enough that I couldn't sleep. So I sort of curled up in a ball and rolled around until I eventually drifted off. And then I slept until morning. :-P (Thank goodness I had the luxury to do that! My prof extended the deadline for both papers to Thursday night.)

So that was BEWBSF #2. There won't be a #3. Unless I suffer amnesia, in which case you will stop me from eating beef stir-fry, right? Thanks.

(P.S. To my knowledge, Jenn did not get sick. I just practically never eat beef from the dining hall. So it's probably just me.)

On bopness:

michelin000 (5:50:16 PM): will you be missing rehearsal again tonight?
TPiglette (5:50:20 PM): yes
michelin000 (5:50:40 PM): =(
michelin000 (5:50:43 PM): we miss you...
TPiglette (5:50:47 PM): aww
michelin000 (5:51:22 PM): bop-less rehearsal = not quite the same
TPiglette (5:51:47 PM): awww...yeah
TPiglette (5:51:49 PM): but you have Brian
michelin000 (5:52:13 PM): i guess so.. but wasn't he the anti-bop at one point?
TPiglette (5:52:47 PM): yeah, but not anymore
michelin000 (5:53:33 PM): hmm.. i guess i missed that development
TPiglette (5:54:01 PM): he's b-bop
TPiglette (5:54:07 PM): you invented that
TPiglette (5:54:15 PM): and eventually we're all just bop
michelin000 (5:54:16 PM): uh huh
michelin000 (5:54:33 PM): oh
michelin000 (5:55:05 PM): i knew he was a bop, i just didn't know he was no longer an anti-bop
michelin000 (5:56:15 PM): although i guess it does seem somewhat contradictory for one entity to have both positive and negative bopness
TPiglette (5:56:23 PM): exactly

Two classes down, one to go. Unfortunately, it's the worst leg of the marathon -- two papers for the SAME CLASS, due tomorrow (why did the additional "short paper" have to be assigned at the end of the quarter too? GRRR). I doubt I'll finish both in time. :(

But I got positive commments on my 3-part invention (exposition/first episode) this morning, and I also picked up my graded math final and found out that I did safely above the average. So at least this morning was good.

I'm really glad I decided not to perform in the DL show today. I'm so swamped. :(

Wow. It's been a LONG time since I've been pulled into a debate about the purpose of Testimony (ah, the perennial identity crisis). It was refreshing -- and no, I'm not being sarcastic. It was good to feel my heart engaged in something again, because lately I've been feeling like I'm just not interested in *anything* (which, as you can imagine, has been bad for the job search). It was also good to remember what God has done in Testimony (and in me) over the past five years, even including all the growing pains.

"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." - Philippians 1:6

Recent things:

- Ganchos: trial by fire. =P Richard just taught them to me 10 minutes before SD3 today. They're hard to get in 10 minutes! Before class, I kept getting mixed up with the different styles of ochos (because the Rio Tango ones are the ones in my body), but I managed to get through the Argentine demos okay. (Except, sometimes Richard likes to demo the final product right away, whereas other times he likes to show only the next part without getting too far ahead -- and he's not always clear about which of the two he wants. So I got laughed at today when he tried to lead an 8-count grapevine in social tango (ladies' right foot free) and I tripped over him because he had JUST practiced the Argentine 8-count basic (ladies' left foot free) with me over on the side. Hmph.) Thank goodness there's only one day of SD3 left. =P

- Chi-En brought me more funny flowers. Haha. They're open right now.

- I love my Piglet blanket! It's sooo soft. :)

- Brian was lip-sync-ing to Hanson's "Mmm-bop" song last night at Midnight Breakfast, much to Melisa's amusement. Also, according to Melisa, Brian is 1.25 people. And he apparently thinks "banarian" is a word (or a name).

- I won't be performing in DL's JCC show this weekend. I'm sad, and it'll be the first performance I'm missing this year, but I definitely need the time for other things right now. I stress out enough during finals as it is, especially when there are multiple papers involved.

- I have my Ragtime dress already anyway (since I thought I was going to need it for JCC). It's pretty! I really like the dark red satin we picked, but there's more light pink showing than I'd thought there would be. Oh well - everyone who's seen it thinks the pink is a tasteful pink. I think it'll be okay as long as I don't think too much about it being pink. ;)

- Flowers make my desk look happy. So do blue birthday cards. (Stacks and stacks of books about Haydn symphonies, however, do not.)

- Yay for Gang of 13! We had our first meeting on Sunday. I think we're going to be a good team.

- I'm so excited to see Erin!!! In less than a week and a half!!! I just gotta get through that week and a half...

By the time I graduate from Stanford, I will have taken 48 "real" classes (i.e., not including SSO, USingers, violin lessons, swimming, or dance classes).

Of those 48 classes, 10 of them go toward my Music major, 6 go toward my Math minor, and 11 are otherwise GER-related.

That means... *21* out of the 48 academic classes I have taken at Stanford will culminate in neither my major nor my minor (or even my graduation). That's 43.75%!!!

Aside from a couple fun classes, that all consists of the ChemE track I slowly abandoned. Yikes...

Happy Birthday, Erin and Walter!

See, look! So funny!



It's amazing -- when they fold up, all the petals are layered so perfectly: one side on top of the next petal, and the other side underneath the previous petal. Then everything shrinks, like one of those cartoon vault things.

And get this: I used my desk lamp to shine enough light on them for a picture, but after I was done, some of the flowers got CONFUSED and starting opening up again! Hahahaha... I'm going to see if I can confuse them some more.

My funny flowers:



(You can't really tell in the picture, but the vase has blue tulips painted on it!)


And my cool new buddy icon (thanks bop!):



By the way, if you scroll down to the bigger picture of my blanket, you can see that Piglet has this expression on his face:

HAHAHA...the wildflowers Chi-En picked for me have a CIRCADIAN RHYTHM! They closed up last night, and I was sad, but the petals were so neatly folded that the flowers didn't look dead. So we were wondering if they'd open up again in the morning when there was sunlight. And they DID! (Well, some of them actually died by falling off the stem. :( But the others are alive and smiling!) It's so funny!!

P.S. I am still undergoing death by way of the paper. I had a very frustrating meeting with my prof yesterday during which he disagreed with everything my TA had suggested to me the day before, so I spent all of last night starting from scratch in some instances to find evidence for the OPPOSITE of what my thesis had originally been. As if the paper weren't torture enough already. BLARGH.

The small blessings, when I need to force myself to remember them:
- Chi-En brought me wildflowers...they look perfect in the vase she gave me for my birthday
- arriving at SD3 totally grumpy about having to do tango, but finding that we were going to spend the first half of class on one-step (the less tango, the better)
- my violin teacher being so understanding about me missing my lesson, because it was the only time my music prof could talk with me about my paper
- the library having recordings and scores of Haydn symphonies in full *sets* (rather than just individual ones)...they're so much easier to check out
- encouraging messages from concerned friends
- a clean desk
- Felicity