[Insert triumphant return]

[Insert Fanfare]
*Sigh*
Verizon, why did you do this to me? I thought we had something special.I mean, I was so vulnerable after my relationship with Comcast, and you, you were just there for me. Things were good, until whoever it was that broke into my box and cut the phone lines got in between us. I kept calling you, but you were always busy with other customers.And you would'nt return my calls. You gave me the run around when I tried to schedule a technician to come and fix the wires. Finally, you promised to come over five times, and each time, you left me waiting and never came.

Then you come over. And you're Drunk. You didn't even used to drink,but when you come, you're drunk. And you've wet yourself. I put up with you because you do fix the box. But then, when I try to get my account back on and get things back on track between us, I see that you gave me the wrong phone number. To my own house. C'mon 'Zonnie, we can't let things go on like this.Either you're going to have better customer service or I'm going to get together with Clear. I see her all around the city, and she's always taunting me with her free MP3 players and constant chances to win a Sony Vaio. And you know that that's my favorite computer, but you've never once given me a chance to win one.
[Srsbiznizz]



Anyway, after five weeks of getting the run around from my now no longer favoured ISP, I'm back online. And I have lots to post about. Let's see how much I can write here before you guys go into a boredom induced coma that I'm going to have to pretend I care deeply about.

Dad: Was in the hospital for a week. He gets out.Two weeks later, he passes out at works and his hospitalised.A week after he first got there, they discovered he had Pneumonia. He recovered, albeit with much difficulty. Then they realise that the pneumonia was only a side effect of the return of his Lymphoma. *Sigh* Dad goes back to the all-too-familiar seventh floor of the Ravdin building in Penn. (The Cancer unit) Fast foreward a week. Dad is on this disgusting neutropenic diet, which in a nutshell means that he's not allowed to eat anything delicious. (Pepper, spices, fresh fruit and vegetables, salads, lunchmeats, non packaged cheeses, etc. etc.) Interestingly, Dad is allowed to have baby formula. Fast foreward about a week and a half from then. Yours truly has been attempting to cook around Dad's diet, because the hospital food has all the delectibility of a sawdust and wood glue casserole, seasoned with nothing and served with a side of raw 'This tastes like cat litter.'.

Home: Is driving me ever closer and closer to carry out one those plans for running away I wrote when I was six. I knew those G.I. Joes would come in handy some day.I've become the family maid and cook. I do all the cooking, the cleanTing,* as well as the shopping and generally keeping the house in order. Which by the way, being an obsessive compulsive neat freak wouldn't normally bother me, except that everyone else has taken my need to live in a clean and ordered house as an excuse to do no cleaning and ordering of their own.Which in a nutshell means that there are no longer any days that I have free of heavy cleaning. And y'know, you can only take the time to clean and disinfect a kitchen so many times before you're content to wipe off whatever visible crud comes off with a dry rag and call it "clean". Luckily, my own rooms a paradise where the carpet is clean enough to eat off of and the books stay in alphebetical and size order.

Vocation:
Is closer and closer everyday. I received my application and did basically all of it in one day. There is one question I'm unsure how to answer, and I'm waiting for my physical and my exams to determine whether or not I actually have hypoglycemia or if I just get all the symptoms of hypoglycemia everytime I eat, when the conditions are being met for a hypoglycemic attack, but without actually having hypoglycemia.
And THIS guy actually showed up while I was at my aspirant's weekend last week. Totally cool. We wend to a super-rad ordination at the Cathedral of Ss. Peter and Paul with enough chant, polyphony choral music (all performed by the excellent cathedral Collegiate choir) to satisfy any trad. Only, I wish they'd dispense with the Cantrix. I loathe the sound of cantors wailing into a mic over a choir and congregation. Especially when said choir/organ/ brass sextet is ding Vaugh-Williams wonderful descant to the hymn tune Old Hundreth.
And also, we went to the graduation at S.Charles Borromeo Seminary. It was great. The seminary faculty was there along with Cardinal Rigali, and...uh...what was that bishop's name again? I forget.**
However, the main reason I was away was to see a psychologist and psychiatrist, and to take two days worth of exams. The first day was pretty short, only FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE QUESTIONS. The second day was another four hundred questions, along with a psycho-sexual exam. Said exam consists of a series of rather perverted questions which seem to have been created to make the Marquis de Sade feel all the embarrassment of a teenager whose mom wants to have an in-depth conversation about his sex life. I'd give you details, but luckily, my selective amnesia had blanked out most of the details of the test. Thank you, selective amnesia.

Art:
I'm drawing Adam and Eve. And it's a really, really deep picture, man.It's filled with all sorts of rich theological concepts. Every detail means something. Some of them are rather obvious. (E.g., Eve has a black halo symbolysing the death of the soul, and around it are the words Mutans Evae nomen.Those are words from the Hymn Ave Maris Stella, from the office of the blessed virgin, pointing to the fact that Mary, by obediently accepting the vocation to be the Mother of God undid, by her obedience, Eve's disobedience. Our first mother was called 'Eva', who led us to death. Our mother in the new covenant was saluted with 'Ave', whose trust and obedience led to our life in Christ.) There's stuff like that in the whole thing. Once it's done, I'll explain the whole piece to you, with quotes from scripture and the Fathers.
Preparatory note: FULL FRONTAL NUDITY.*** Actually, that's not true, I've just always wanted an excuse to reference that. (Monty Python Fan.) There are cleverly grown tree branches to cover the right parts, but they are naked. Please don't be scandalised.

Liturgy: Duh, we had a solemn high mass in the extraordinary form, and solemn pontifical vespers in the ordinary for the following Tuesday. Boy, was that complicated. Yours truly was the crucifer for the first and the second thurifer for the second. Said job meant the main thurifer and I did the traditional 'Walk backwards and incense the blesse sacrament and try not to walk into something' incensation during the procession. Yours truly was given the parish's nicest, most expensive Heaviest thurible to use. Did I mention that it was joint-crushingly heavy?
Said thurible burns very hot and fast, and the incense was gone by the time the procession ended.
The main thurifer and I were to have incensed the blessed sacrament simultaneously during the pontifical benediction, but mine was empty. Attempts to go to the M.C. and bishop and retrieve more incense were unsuccessful. So I incensed the blessed sacrament with an empty thurible, while the main thurifer got to have glorious clouds of thick, sweet-smelling, asthma-inducing incense.
Nothing special to report, other than the fact that the pastor has asked my to fill in for Br.David, the usual M.C. at the high mass on Sundays. I've payed attention enough that I know what to do, only it involves a lot of standing. And these people, with their 'libretto by Bugnini, ceremonial by Fortescue' rule have re-introduced the osculata, which as far as I'm concerned are definitely suppressed, therefore illegal, therefore Rong. And besides, I don't like them.That's a good enough reason not to do them. But it it's the custom, it's the custom, and I'll just go along with it like a Good Catholic Boy.

And now, I'll end this wall of text.




*And If you get that reference, You Win the day.

** Explanation: A student from the college division was to have given an address, and while thanking the faculty and the bishops, forgot the name of one of the bishops and we had a lovely awkward pause.Said seminarian became the butt of Every.Single. Speaker. And seminarian.Their Jokes, I mean. For the rest of the hour and a half graduation ceremony.Poor guy. But it was funny.

*** Lets see how many hits I'll get from Google from people looking for dirty stuff.Or how many people are'nt going to realise that that's the title of something from Monty Python and not a link to something dirty. Cue Google Analytics.

[ With much applause and thanks to THIS which inspired me.]

Well, that's not helpful. D:

My brother, after crashing EVERYONES COMPUTERS decided to make up for it by re-installing Windows. Only, he bought the 'New' disk from ebay. The 'New' disk is covered in obvious, visible scratches, and many of the files are corrupted.
So now we have to send it back, get the money back, and spam the guy with repeated negative reviews.

The good news, is that almost none of my files were affected. <3
The bad news is that the one file that was affected is the internet software, so Verizon does'nt recognize my computer. D:

Hmm..

Well, it seems that the computers of everyone in the house have been affected by this terirble computer virus going around.We saved my second laptop, by my good one downstairs as well as everyone elses have crashed. And on mine, only the administrator account works well. The guest account, where I keep all my stock photos and reference drawings is sloooow. And Firefox crashes on it.
My files don't seem to have suffered any damage though. I just wonder if it's safe to move the photos at least from the guest to the administrator account.

Anyway, I'm going downtown to buy new markers today and start the drawing of Beat.And also, find a way to color my manga, since I was dumb and drew on both sides of the paper,and the ink will soak through.

Help a brother out?

Since, you know, you're such a kind and generous person, print my chant booklet and help a poor, Catholic boy do what Psalm 47:7 says? Because Holy Week isn't far away, and as you can see, it's still a work in progress.

So yeah, either give it to me in person (I'll let you know which mass I'm serving this Sunday) or just send it to me in the mail. I can provide a shipping address. And no, it's not My address. Stalkers. I'll give you the address of someone who I know will hold the pages for me.

It's only five-six pages long, and it's the text of the chants only. I'll do the lines and neumes myself. There are four medium-sized woodcuts in it, and each antiphon has a cardinal initial.It's all in black and white, so don't worry about using your color ink.
Send me an e-mail and I'll send it to you as an attachment.(Either PDF or word document, your choice.) I'd link the PDF here, but I don't know how to do that.

Damn printer.

These past two days, I have been going through the WORST computer hell that I've even experienced.

So, I bought some ink for my Kodak ESP-3 yesterday. This is NOT a printer I would have wanted, but my dad thought it was a good deal and bought it. Well, I got home with the ink yesterday at around 2:30 PM. I worked on the printer attempting to print things until well after 12:30 midnight. Straight.Without a break. And no dinner. The stupid thing only printed blank sheets, one after another.Then It finally printed, but it printed so lightly that I thought I was looking at the reverse side of my sheets where the ink might have soaked through.I of course turned them over expecting to see the real images, only to find that this light, almost invisible thing WAS the image. It didn't print any text either. I did test sheets from the control panel, same thing. The printer does nothing whatever when I clicked the 'maintenance' icon.After the first three hours, I got an acceptable print. The images were a bit lighter than I would have wanted, and the text was a bit small, but I can live with the first and I can change the second.
So we're good, right?
Wrong.
Immediately after that, I tried to print my document. Blank pages and almost invisible images yet again. I spent the next few hours changing the settings, checking to make sure the cartridges were in place properly, making sure the printer head was in right, etc. Same problems. Around 12:36, I quit and went to bed.
Then I overslept and missed mass and the office.
I decided again to see what I could do. I went back to Kodak's diagnostic site.The first test did nothing to help. Some Google searching made me think that the printer head might be dried out.I took it out and looked at it.
It is most definitely Not dried out.
I let the printer clean it automatically about three times.Tried to print again, but still not different. The tech sites I visited suggested that it might be clogged or dirty, not dried out. Too bad the 'maintenance' icon is unresponsive, else the printer could have cleaned the printer head itself.
So I fiddled around and worked with things till around 11:36 today.

Then, an epiphany.

I went back to Kodak's site and went through the step-by-step solutions and repair a second time.This time, however, the things it suggested were exactly what my problems were. They prompted me to print a demo sheet. It came out okay. So I tried to print my document, same problems. I went back and changed one answer, and continued. Once again, the suggested errors were exactly what was actually happening. They said that the printer head is defective, and once I supplied the correct information, a new one would be sent to me free of charge.

I hope to God that It works, because It'll take me forever to attempt to hand copy those chants. I doubt I'll get it done in time.
And yes, please, please, please answer the post above this.

KTHNXBAI.