This post is about earrings

Back about maybe ten years ago, I decided to fulfill my dream of getting a cartilage piercing. I'd used those little slid-on cuffs for a while and pestered every piercing person I found with the question, "If my lobes got infected, will my cartilage as well?" Since my lobes had managed to get infected and remain that way for four years, while still being pierced. And then I put sensitive solution earrings in them and they cleared up and everyone was happy. But apparently a cartilage infection can result in surgery and probably losing chunks of your ear.

I like my ears.

But when I was nineteen, I finally just went and got it done at Claire's and got a cutesy pink bottle of stuff to rub on it and so on. It was also several months before I could sleep on that side of my head. And a bump of displaced cartilage formed on the back of my ear for a year or two before disappearing again. Claire's has since ceased doing those, which is probably good because I think they use the regular earring puncher for it and an actual piercing place uses something like a mini hole puncher, I think. Instead of displacing cartilage, it just takes it out. But my cartilage didn't get infected, although it did get jarred during roughhousing a few times and bled and was painful.

I tried with various earrings, but some were too thick and a ring pressed into the ear when I slept, making it sore. So for the past couple years, I've just been rocking the ball-post-back combo, which is basically a normal ball earring. Which I take out at night because it presses into the side of my head.

All this to give some background for when I saw a cartilage earring on another girl on vacation with a flat back, like a tiny coin.

Ok, so stuff like that exists at every piercing place ever. How was I supposed to know?

"Where did you get that?" I asked. "Cause I wouldn't take mine out ever if it didn't dig into the side of my head."

She told me about sketchy-sounding Chinese-run jewelry stores that apparently sold everything and could fix anything. And apparently I had just missed one that day in a shopping center we were at. I had, understandably, spent the entire time in Barnes and Noble.

And so began a quest!

Objective: Obtain a flat-backed cartilage piercing.

"Wayne, can we stop back by Zona Rosa? There's a jewelry place I want to hit up."

"We'll see," Wayne replies. Then later I get told it probably won't be open when we leave the next morning.

"I've lived with this for five years, I suppose I can wait a week," I say.

So at the end of the week, I try again.

"Those are sold at all the piercing places," I get told.

"Does that mean we can't go?" I'm stubborn about getting an actual answer.

We'll see.

On the drive back, they call John from their truck to tell him that we're not able to stop there cause we're going a different way.

Bah.

Back at home, I Google piercing places, but end up going to the mall cause I had a return. In the mall, I stop by "Shag," one of those hippie places that sells incense, baja hoodies, and boxers with weed leaves on them. Shag replaced another hippie place that replaced a Hot Topic. Anyway, they pull out a bunch of flat-backed studs for ears, but there is a problem.

"Those are really thick," I say. They're labeled 16G. "Is that the standard size?"

"Yeah, I think so," replies the guy.

I explain my situation. He tells me that standard size is 22G (which is somehow smaller than a 16G) and how some people up their size by some weird process involving rubbing, lotion, irritation, ibuprofen, and ramming. "What' does Claire's use?" he asks.

"I don't know. I guess I'll go look."

At Claire's, they do actual have varying sizes of cartilage piercings. "Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to do mine, too," the girl says. Apparently, she got hers done at Claire's as well. I pick out a 20G, that looks more blingly that I like, and an 18G, since buy one, get one for $5. I'll start a process of gradually expanding the hole, like I did with my lobes, although there is no cartilage in lobes.

At home, the 20G goes in easily and moves easily and without pain. Too easily. Also, the ring is so small I can't close it around the side of my ear. Too bad I can't return earrings.

No pain, no gain. So I go for the 18G. First problem is that apparently, it is a wire pressed into indents on either side of a ball. So as I pull it out, the ball pops out. So I'd need to realign the ends of the wire and push them in on either side of the ball. Also, since it's an 18G, the wire is fairly hard to bend. Even harder when it has been shoved in a hole too small for it in my ear.

"David? I need your help!"

David's help comes in the form of large pinchy tools that I don't know the names for. If this doesn't prove that I trust him, I don't know what will.

Somewhat needless to say, my ear was NOT HAPPY with me. It's still sore. Guess I'll be sleeping on the right side of my head for a while.

So, Quest Incomplete, for now. Until the hole gets a little happier.

Anyone want a tiny 20G cartilage earring? I know we aren't supposed to share them, but I could probably boil it or something...

Sunday's Dose of Guilt Doesn't Involve a Sermon

Unless your portable snacks to Prairie Moon Winery are carrot and celery sticks, sans ranch dressing, I would not recommend bringing the Fitness magazine.

Now I feel guilty.

Those cheese curds and sea-salt&vinegar chips still tasted good, though.

Curse my lack of self-control.

May the Fourth be with you

I tried finding a calender in Google Calender's list of available ones to add for "Nerd Holidays." Unfortunately, they don't have an official nerd holiday calender. How am I going to know what day to go out for pie? (Pi Day, 3.14) Or talk like a pirate? (Talk Like A Pirate Day, 9.19) Or the best day to host a Star Wars Marathon?

That would be today, by the way. May 4th, or as it is known on the Internet, "May the Fourth be with you."

So now I have to go and add those dates to my calender manually. Truly, a first world problem. Although nothing trumps first world problems like what I consider the ultimate first world problem, that is, Firefly being cancelled. That one still keeps me up at night.

It's a shame that I'm not hosting a Star Wars Marathon, but I'm not really feeling all that great, so I may curl up with my Star Wars Omnibus comic book on Quinlan Vos. You know, the Jedi with dreadlocks.

I'm still waiting for the day when someone gets my subtle tribute to Quinlan Vos, but they'd have to be a pretty big nerd and observant to boot.

Why am I talking about Star Wars? This must be your first time to my blog. Welcome.

Star Wars is my childhood. More than knights and castles and Power Rangers or whatever else they had at that point, I fought my way to adulthood with a lightsaber and the power of the Force. It shaped my views on sci fi (which could be a negative thing) and I am super excited about the next movie coming out this December. Looks like we get a girl Jedi for a main character!

No, don't look at me like that. I'm not about to go crazy and change Thor to a woman or vote for Hillary Clinton or anything like that. But I am a girl and I do like things being equal when they can be (love being able to vote and hold jobs, yah know?) and there was a serious lack of girl Jedi in the original Trilogy (although there was a serious lack of Jedi, period) and while there were girl Jedi in Episodes 1-3, they were mostly cameo roles. And I'd like to forget that trilogy exists.

So there were guy Jedi, and now we get to see a girl Jedi in action. And since I would obviously be Force sensitive (in the same way I would have gotten my invitation from Hogwarts), I would like to know what it is like to be a girl Jedi.

I guess I could be wrong and those are just Tatooine clothes or something.

May the Fourth be with you! Here's some fun videos to get in the mood.

I guess I never knew what it meant to "blink myopically"

I have recently discovered I am quite probably short sighted. To be fair, I knew my eyes weren't perfect starting last year sometime, where the driver of whatever car I was in would ask, "What does that sign say?" and then be able to read it before I was.

At church, I realized it was hard to read the lyrics from some of the songs while in the back, but blamed it on being far away and whatever funky visualizations they had going on. Then one Sunday, a pastor put up a passage from the Bible to demonstrate formatting. And I couldn't read it. I could have written that off too, saying I could still see the formatting idea and had the text in my own Bible and so didn't really need to read it and maybe that wasn't what he was going for, but David was sitting right next to me and he could read it.

The tragic truth. I was nearsighted.

As the weeks went on after that, I became a bit of a hypochondriac by looking at everything and then freaking out. As it stands right now, letters start to get blurry on signs five feet away. I don't notice it in sunny conditions, but much more in lower lighting. And I notice that I sit someone nearer to the computer than I'd really prefer with this chair and I get a little nearer to stuff in the grocery store to read it than I'd prefer.

It's way more noticeable with letters and signs, largely because of the sharp edges and the fact you have to see all the edges to be able to identify the meaning. Like that park bench could be blurry, but I can still tell it's a park bench. I see it, identify it, and then dismiss it. Which is why I didn't notice for so long. I couldn't tell things were blurry because I only looked to identify, I didn't look to see. But letters... you have to be able to see them.

If I scrunch up my nose and squint, I can make things swim into focus. And I look stupid.

It's not a big deal, yet. I can still see cars and people and everything and even if I can't precisely read the license plate until close, I can still see there is a car, which direction it's going, how fast, and color and type, from the same distance as everyone else.

It's a good thing this didn't happen when I was a kid. I would have been devastated. And glasses would have been the Worst Thing Ever. Because you need them to see, but you have to take them off at night. And they can't fall off or break. And you can't really swim with them on. Now it's like, how was that a big deal? And glasses can be chic.

Even so, I'm mildly annoyed. Is it reversible? Eye exercises, maybe?

Or maybe we can blame the increase in nearsightedness on computers.

*narrows eyes at the computer screen* *not myopically, just glaring*

Analyze This

I found another repressed fear of my dreams!

To date:

-Fear of not flying after jumping off of something and instead hitting the ground. We'll just translate this one as fear of heights.

-Fear of doing something fun when math homework is waiting at home to claim me (from high school)

-Fear of signing up for a class or having an essay and completely forgetting until it's too late to do anything about it except try to right the whole dang research paper in an hour. (from college) Oddly enough, this haunts me more in my dreams than it did in real life. I totally did a research paper in one day once. And got like an A-.

-Fear of making a breakfast sandwich and it taking forever, only to drop it on the floor and have to start over again (from Panera)

-Fear of having camera duties and jiggling the camera when we were recording. Actually, this one is new too.

-Fear of sleeping through my alarm or having to make it to an interview and it taking forever to walk there.

-Fear of trying to run and not being able to run, or like run in jelly, or not run fast enough

-Fear of trying to drive and not being able to drive well, or crashing into things

-Fear of zombies (don't ask)

-Fear of being unable to see

And now, for the one I just discovered, the fear of being lost in a cave! With bonus fear of being unable to breathe!

Actually, this is another reoccurring one, I just finally translated it. Following another cave dream. Maybe I got this one from a movie of Tom Sawyer. I'm not afraid of caves. I went spelunking once and had great fun. I'm not claustrophobic. I actually like small spaces and will be the first one to leap under a stage we set up to do something. But I am afraid of going into a tunnel, like of snow, and having it narrow to a point and being unable to move, to get my arms from my sides, or to try and wiggle back out backwards while hoping the whole thing doesn't collapse and trap you. And, apparently, I'm afraid of following a tunnel in a cave to have it dead end as your candle is going out. And the bonus points, I'm afraid of diving into a tunnel of water only to have it never resurface and your air run out. I know I had a few dreams about that.

How do I get these fears? I blame movies. Dang zombies.

Defining My Role

David came up with an idea for a quick-play role-playing game. Think Dungeons and Dragons, but without the three hours of trying to choose if I want to be a race that is good for a shaman or a race that is cool. I have an odd tendency toward half-and-half races, like half-elf or half-orc. I presume this is because I'm a third culture kid and have never really felt that I belonged anywhere. Or really felt the need to.

Anyway. A version of role playing without memorizing the character sheets, looking up things in handbooks, agonizing over race and class, trying to organize a party that has all essential character, and rolling lots of dice to tell us, in a numerical value, exactly what we are good at.

David's idea was something like this:
Story: A group of people go to a coffee shop or some other gathering place. We were heading to Smokey Row the night we thought this up to meet with some friends to play games. (I thought a night of playing games would be wasted on Phase 10 and wanted to role-play, which is rather how this got started.) This group of people gets sucked into an alternate world which they then have to work their way through and cope with. David was thinking fantasy, so it'd probably be due to a portal or magic or something. I was thinking sci-fi, so alien abduction.

Mechanics: The Dungeon Master, that being David, would be a benevolent (or at least neutral) deity who controls the whole thing and tells the story. Our characters would gain skills as they interacted with the world and role-played (like if Shane kept sneaking behind trees, he might get better at it. If I kept throwing rocks at chickens, maybe I'll get better at that).

And... that's it. I wasn't really for this idea, largely because it seemed very susceptible to what I termed "brain vomit" where David could make up anything and in a pinch might put out idiotic things, like talking hats or chickens that could throw rocks back. Maybe it seems I don't have a lot of faith in David's storytelling abilities, but 1) I've never read much that he's written, and 2) he's as stubborn and contrary as the old guy in Up and might do those things just to spite me.

I'm fine with a quick-play role-playing idea, but I rather like the idea that even though a lot of elements are invisible, they still exist. Maybe you don't start with a character sheet, but something defining all learned abilities and your level in them still lurks in the background, at least until later levels. The players might not know anything about the world, but it has rules and scope and isn't just a barren wasteland that gets filled in with said scary chickens in talking hats as we run into them. Best example I can come up with was the Wheel of Time world. It was complete. Things in the first books were referenced that we didn't come into contact with much later books, but when we did, we knew about them and knew they were there. They had existed from the beginning.

Obviously that takes more prep work and David just wanted to get going.

We played Phase 10.

I'd like to point out that to start our bumbling 21st century selves into his new world, we'd get a little bit of a starter. David asked for a short list of strengths, weaknesses, and then maybe our goal in life.

I started my list, even though we didn't play it looked like this:

Strengths
1.
2.
3.

Weaknesses
1. Acrophobia
2.
3.

Goal in life:

Yeah, that's all I could come up with. Oh sure, I could probably brainstorm a LOT more weaknesses. Lack of tact? Inability to read social situations? Stubborn? Myopic? Toxiphobic? Mistrust of all authority figures? Check, check, check, check, check, check. Or is that last one a strength? But I don't know if those are the types of things that would transfer to a role-playing game well. I'll obviously role-play as stubborn and lacking tact. Because, honestly, my roles never differ much from myself. I'm a bad actress. But like myopia? At least I know I have an almost overwhelming fear of heights.

Strengths is kind of similar. I have a mild ability to understand computers, which might help me in my sci-fi world, but won't in David's fantasy. Anyway, most of my generation has that ability and Shane is actually in IT. I've had grand ideas about learning disaster preparedness, Krav Maga, ham radio, gardening, and so on, but I haven't actually done a lot of these things. Ability to run for an hour or so? That could be helpful, I guess, but I can't run fast, which seems the important part. I have no self-defense. I couldn't define what plants are edible. I probably don't have enough mechanical understanding to decipher a wildmill, much less the Six-Fingered-Man's life sucking devices. Even if we switched to sci-fi, I don't know how to pilot an aircraft (another of my dreams) or speak another language or first aid or a lot of things. I probably couldn't get my phone out of Chinese.

And if you find my life goal, could you let me know? I'll come and collect it.

Desperate Times call for Biking

"That's the worst part about this," David said. "I don't want to leave you without the car."

"Cause I'd use it if you did," I reply sarcastically.

I don't like to drive. It's not the mechanical act that bugs me, because on an empty highway with the tunes cranked it's pretty good, and I like driving go-carts and things like that. I hate driving around other people, all of us wielding massive metal machines with just our hands, I hate driving around traffic laws, because they seem super easy to break, and I hate using a several ton polluting machine to haul my 135 pound butt a mile to pick up something from the grocery store. Seems overkill to drive in town. I'm not anti-car, they are very useful for when it's very cold, or you need to go a couple hundred miles (preferably not taking all weekend to do so), or for picking up milk, box-wine, and pizza. I just personally don't like driving and it seems the lazy option, the easy way out.

So, David is leaving for the weekend and taking the car, largely because he needs to go a hundred miles or so. Very practical. And I have some stuff I need to do this weekend and some stuff I want to do this weekend, with no car.

Challenge accepted. With my bike.

So tonight, I want to get pizza. I have, actually, gotten pizza on my bike before. So I'll be hunting down a sweatshirt I can use to tie it to my handlebars again.

Tomorrow I need to go take pictures of one of Dad's houses, but that barely counts because I could walk to that house. And then I have a work shift at like 9:30. PM. Maybe I'll stop by Bike World and get my headlamp battery replaced.

Sunday. I might be lazy and listen to the message from the Internet. Shame shame, I know. Then maybe go on a bike ride with Mom because it's actually supposed to be nice that day, and all next week (did I mention it's not going to get above 40 degrees until then?).

Also, I have a coupon for a free movie rental from Family Video, over in West Ames. They're advertising Into the Woods, which I want to see, but I don't think David would appreciate. So maybe I'll do that tomorrow too. We'll see if I get to all/some/any of this stuff. Well, I have to get to the pizza. Already ordered.

I'll be posting this after David gets back. Don't particularly like advertising I'm home alone without a car.

Update 1: I made with the pizza just fine, although some of the people waiting at Pizza Hut were rubbernecking to see what I was doing. Stripping off my sweatshirt and using it to lash my pizza to my bike that I had with me in the lobby. Yum, pizza.

Update 2: Saturday was as-planned. Light obtained. Work... worked. Ride home uneventful.

Update 3: Sunday I was lazy and listened to the sermon on the Internet as soon as they uploaded it. I did not go on a bike ride with Mom because the wind was like 30 miles per hour from the West. We went on a walk and almost became kites. For the same reason, I did not bike to Family Video. It's west.

So did I meet the challenge? Eh. I did everything I needed to do (work and picture taking). I didn't do everything I wanted to do. I guess I'll take it. It's so great to be able to bike again and transport myself again. I love Spring.