There are also many misconceptions as to who can give blood or not.  For example, it used to be a rule that if you visited the UK for more than three months, you could not give blood.  The rule still applies if you visited the UK more than three months during the time the rule was in effect (January 1, 1980, to December 31, 1996), but if you visited the UK after that, that is no longer the case.  Now, you have to have spent at least five years in Europe total before you can be ineligible for donation.

Military members and their families can have spent up to three months in the UK, or up to six months at other bases in Europe, before 1996.  Otherwise, it is the regular five year limitation.  (I mention this because I was a military dependent—and knew others—for my entire childhood.)

If you lived in or were born in West Africa since 1977 you cannot donate blood, due to the risk of Type O HIV, which so far is undetectable in blood testing.

The full list of actual criteria—including drug use, sexuality, cancer, diabetes, aspirin, birth control, you name it—are available at http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/eligibility-requirements/eligibility-criteria-alphabetical-listing. 

I implore you, if you are eligible to give blood, please take an hour and do it.  Go to www.redcrossblood.org and sign up online for a place near you; I found a drive online three blocks away I didn’t know about, and made a reservation online.

My glasses from ZenniOptical.com got here today.  I have to say, the entire process went pretty well.  So well, in fact, that I’m going to give a small piece of free advertising right here.

I originally was in need of new glasses, and so went off to the cheapest place I knew to buy them: Wal-Mart.  I’m pretty basic on frames, so the $9 frames were good for me.  However, I have a -5.00 prescription in both eyes; I can’t get the regular $29 glass lenses.  Well, I could, but the optional-for-most-people polycarbonate lenses keep their thinness at stronger prescriptions unlike glass ones.

Coke bottles anyone?  No seriously, coke bottles would be thinner than -5.00 glass lenses.

No-scratch coating is a must.  Fortunately Wal-Mart throws that one in.  I would like the Anti-UV coating, and I require the no-glare coating; night driving is a bitch at my level of prescription.  After all the charges for all of that, the estimate was about $159.  Not including the $60 eye exam.

Yeah, sure, you see, I’m a full-time student working freelance work.  Let me pull that out of my–

After my moaning about it on Twitter, enter Elimeny to the rescue.¹  She recommended to me that I locate my glasses at this website called ZenniOptical.com, saying she had been a po-girl like me, and knew where to get deals on anti-blindness devices.

Except, I was a po-boy.  As in, not a girl.  Not the sandwich.  Stop looking at me like that.

Finding the site—and after having paid the $60 for an eye exam, you need that, either way—I browsed the site, and found excellent titanium frames similar to the ones I had for $12.  Then, the lenses: For the anti-scratch, anti-uv, and no-glare coatings, clip-on sunglasses, along with a free hard case and one of those soft cloth thingies: $17.  Srsly.  OMG.  $29 for all of that.  I shit you not.  I was so stoked, I bought TWO pairs.  $5 shipping.  Suck-it, Wal-Mart.

Within the first day I received the following e-mail, which, I thought was VERY bonus-point-earning in the customer service scale:

Dear Ms. / Mr. Hughes,
 
Before processing your order further, we would like to remind you that both of your Spherical values -5.00 might be -0.50 for your two pairs of glasses. In this case, would you please double check the Sph entries with your optometrist and confirm the information with us?
 
Please email your confirmation to us so that we can proceed with your order.
 
Thank you for selecting Zenni Optical for your vision needs.

 

At first, I laughed.  I’m so blind that the company was like “-5.00?  WTF?!”  But it struck me that this means it isn’t some blind (excuse the pun) automated system that sends out the orders, and if you typed in something egregiously wrong, your bad. 

Well, I suppose there COULD be an automatic email that goes out if it’s above a certain prescription.  Even if that’s the case, the fact that they thought of this fail-safe is a win in my book.

I replied in the affirmative, at which point they replied back to me—lending some credibility to the not-completely-automated theory—letting me know that my original order would go on as planned.

Cheap glasses, cheap shipping, I was prepared for a decent wait time.  Sure enough, I got mine in 12 days time—ordered on Wednesday, October 20, and received them today, Monday, November 1st.  Not a bad turnaround, if you consider a week to make the two pairs of glasses and a few days shipping.  Wal-Mart said my glasses would be ready in a minimum of 2 weeks. 

The glasses arrived in perfect condition, wrapped within wrapping within their hardcases within the bubble-wrap envelope thingy.  I put them on immediately, and they were perfect.  Fortunately I had gotten the measurements right (you have to pick out all the millimeter sizes for your eye distance, bridge, head, arms, etc).  I put my second pair away for backup later on down the road, and I’m wearing an awesome pair of titanium glasses that I paid $30 bucks for.

Woot.

¹ Elimeny is the one person who gives me hope each time I attempt to play World of Warcraft before the quite literally millions of losers and haters out there give me a hard time for not “healing right” and making me swear I’ll never play that game again.  ‘Til the next time I play, of course.  Visit her awesome blog at http://missmedicina.blogspot.com. 

I have this one instructor who requires his students to bring in their finished draft to do a peer review session, where everyone looks at everyone else’s essays.  For a while, I was frustrated with this process.  Not at the peer review itself—it’s a great idea, really—but at the quality of my “critics.”  Being a more experienced writer, I tend to use more advanced techniques in my essays than those starting out.

I use the term “advanced” lightly here.  Things like brackets within quotes when changing part of a quotation, subheadings, knowing the difference between using quotes and italicizing for emphasis, the appropriate times to use first-person pronouns in an academic paper, et cetera.

Unfortunately, since they’ve never seen these kinds of things before, they mark them all up on my paper.  That’s not really a huge deal, I just ignore them as wrong.  Where we start getting into trouble is when I want some feedback.  Usually, I don’t want feedback on grammar.  I proofread several times, and I know the rules.  I want feedback on more stylistic aspects of writing.  How does it flow?  Does it make sense?  Do you believe the arguments are strong or too weak?  Wordiness?  I know I’m guilty of wordiness from time to time, but the students in this class can only be impressed by the “big”, “intelligent” words I chose to use, and are not able to tell whether they’re the right words or not: connotation is lost on them.

Connotation: the unspoken, secondary meaning of a word.  Dictionary.com gives the example: “A possible connotation of ‘home’ is ‘a place of warmth, comfort, and affection.’

The other side of that coin is the things that I’m reviewing.  For the longest time, I could not get through the first paragraph or two of these kids’ essays without my head going into total shut-down mode.  It’s disgusting the lack of care these students put into their essay. 

And my personal pet peeve: Word is not omniscient.  If you fuck a word up badly enough, it’ll suggest something not even remotely close to what you were saying.  If I see: “He wanted to see what activates he could do today,” I know for a fact that you were too stupid to spell “activities”, and then let Word attempt spellcheck for you, in which you screwed it up so horrendously that “activates” was the closest thing it could find, and you did the click click click on the accept button thing  without looking at what Word was doing because I’ll bet you had two hundred other equally-as-stupid misspellings that you couldn’t be bothered to stop and check.

Stupidity is contagious, and you didn’t take any vitamins today.  My guess is, you got it at home.

Also, I was finding that albeit my hard work red-inking the hell out of others’ papers, that nobody took it seriously, and then got bad grades anyways.  I just do not get it.  Then they whine and complain at how difficult this guy’s class is because he marks off for every “stupid thing like not using punctuation right.”  WHAT?!

I went to my professor and complained.  I told him these classes benefit me naught, and I don’t really feel the need to sit there for an hour and fifteen minutes and educate his students for him.  Fortunately, he agreed.  He’s a great guy, really.  Now, in exchange for continuing to help other students in the class, I can let him take a look at my essay, and point out things for me.  I was slightly less frustrated after that.

What really amazed me though was finally, one student actually asked for my help.  I was ecstatic.  Someone wanted to learn!  Just that simple thing lifted my heart so much that I spent the entire class with this one person—no one else cared I didn’t look at anyone else’s paper—going over flow and suggestions for improvement, and why it is “He is better than I” and not “He is better than me.”  I felt useful.  That gave me just a bit of hope.

–So why does being a writer suck?

Because there’s so much damn WRITING!  UGH!  First, I’ve enrolled at the local community college here, and although I’ve placed past all the basic writing courses, there’s still two semesters of required composition.  There’s nothing more horrid than writing about writing.  Rhetorical analysis is one of the most BORING things in the world to do. 

–rhetorical analysis – n. the process of breaking down a text into the sum of its parts to determine what the writer is trying to achieve, and what strategies are being employed to achieve it

It is so dry, lacking emotion and clarity, exactly the opposite of what I want to write about.

Besides that, I have to write for my other classes as well, obviously.  But, that’s the way it is: before they’ll let me go and write about whatever I want, I have to prove to everyone that I indeed know how to write.  Which is no problem, I understand it.

–Though, I have to say, I feel sorry for the other kids in my class.  (Yes, kids.) I’ve yet to see proof of academic literacy in any of them.  I’d be embarrassed to be their parents.

Outside of that, I’m struggling to make money as a writer in the outside world too.  No one wants to pay me for my opinion.

–Really?  No shit.

I do have a couple of paying writing jobs right now.  One is for a search engine optimization company, writing articles with keywords to boost search engine hits for various websites.  I was writing on and off for GearLive.com, I should really start doing that full time, if Andru Edwards still remembers who I am.  It’s been a little while.  (EDIT: I checked my old GearLive account, it’s been locked down.)  That’s fine.  I also write tech articles for a couple sites.  I used to write for a few more places than I do now, but I had to scale back all of my non-paying jobs for now.  It is not cheap being a full-time student!

–Blah, blah, blah.

The bottom line here, is that unfortunately, it takes a long time writing before you get to write about what YOU want to write about.  If you truly have the passion, however, you’ll stick with it.  I will.  I want to get my novel out.  I’m going to try and continue the storyline sometime soon.  We’ll see.

I hope to try this more regularly.  See you next time, people.

What I’m really psyched about is this app I found called WPtoGo. It allows you to post to WordPress blogs like this one. I can view and edit older posts, view and review comments, and it even has some basic formatting tools.

So maybe I can post just a little more often on the personal blog, eh? We’ll see. Maybe write some more of my idle thoughts. I’ve worked very hard to tone the emo down, and it has become easier as I work through my divorce and find out who I really am. I believe I’ve made some great strides. I am a much different person than the man who struggled with self-hate and loathing, blaming himself for his cheating wife, unable to truly put the blame where it truly lied and wash his hands of it.

I lost a lot of friends along the way: those who hate me for who I was, and those who drop my various social network friendships for being tired of hearing my depressed rants and avoid me in person. It is unlikely I’ll get either group of people back, but in the end, I can only rely on myself.

So, we’ll see.

When I was growing up, I was subjected to the usually comical routine of the Wedding Ring Dropped Down the Drain. The ring would be dropped or put or misplaced somewhere ridiculously difficult to get to, and the rest of the show/episode/story would play out the mishappenings of whoever was supposed to retrieve it, usually before Significant Other found out it was lost.

I was never understanding of why the wedding ring was a big deal. Then I learned how much they can cost… and “realized” that losing a wedding ring was the equivalent of accidentally dropping thousands of dollars into the sewer, never to be seen again. And that, to me, was the justification for said attempts at retrieval of said item.

I had been thinking recently, looking at the wedding ring on my left hand, thinking of my wife, gone thousands of miles away. I find it interesting to note that until now, I never ever considered the emotional attachment of a wedding ring.

I began to think and realize how important it was for me to have and to wear it, especially while my wife is so far away. And then I started to realize exactly how important it is to my life, what it does for my peace of mind. It’s become a part of me, a ritual I live through everyday that keeps me going while my wife is gone.

Then, as I went through the days, I started noticing in greater detail the attention I paid to my ring during a normal day.

First, I sleep with it on. I used to not do that, it was weird wearing it at all. But what I realized that without it on, in my sleep, as I missed my wife, my thumb would check the bottom of my ring finger to ensure it was there, that she was not a dream, and when it wasn’t I HAD to wake up and check the nightstand to make sure it was there still, that I hadn’t misplaced it. It wasn’t long before I needed to wear it. I would feel its cornered edge against my thumb, and go back to sleep immediately.

I won’t wear it in the shower. That’s weird… I don’t know what the effects of soap and shampoo and water are on jewelry, but for some reason I’m afraid it will rust or something. (I don’t think gold does that, but, meh.) But, when I do take it off, I place it next to my glasses so I won’t forget where it is, and I won’t put it back on until I’ve showered, brushed my teeth, shaved, and put gel in my hair, so that way I can wash my hand clean of everything, and put my ring back on.

There were a couple times while I was in a rush when I didn’t grab my ring right away, getting dressed before heading back to the bathroom to perform the latter actions above. And until I started paying attention, I never realized my thumb was constantly checking the ring finger again, as if it were missing something. I do it every time my ring isn’t on.

As I drive to work, if I drive with my windows down, my hand will tap the side of the vehicle while driving. The metallic “chink” of my ring against the car reassures me that it is on there. I am also very careful to not point my hand downward, so as to not allow it possibly slip away. (It won’t ever do that, it’s a firm fit, but it was an unconscious movement.) It was funny, I never realized until then that I did it every day I could, needed to know that I had that ring, had a right to wear that ring.

At work, when I’m alone, frustrated, or in deep thought, I tap my ring and pinky fingers on the desk, hearing the noise. Again, it was unconscious until now, but I need to know its on there for me to think straight.

You know those sick habits we all have that make us feel good? Some people squash bugs, or bite our nails off, or pop zits, or pick on scabs? You know that feeling you get when you do it? That rush of “ha.” I do it constantly with my ring. I find myself taking it off sometimes, its removal giving me that same rush. Looking at the not-tanned skin that lay underneath the ring; seeing its permanent mark on me. Taking it off, knowing it’s not supposed to come off. When I put it back on, I can actively feel the difference, what its like while its off, what its like while its on, knowing for certain once again, that its supposed to be on there.

Another thing that I didn’t realize I did until I started paying attention is that when I speak to women, I will touch my face with my left hand, as if in thought, so that the ring is readily apparent. This usually starts the comment that I’m married, and then I brag about my wife. This is interesting for me to find out, because I have always known that I have used that “thinking” motion with my right hand, and I didn’t realize until I was looking for it, that when I talk to women, I knowingly use my left, hoping on some level that they will see it and react in someway.

(That is also vain on some level, hoping they will react in a negative way to the marriage, to prove the fact that all women want me on some level, and they are disappointed that I do not return the feeling. Though it feels good to know someone thinks you are attractive, especially when feeling attractive is a rare occurance for a man such as me.)

Other weird things:

I sometimes make a fist and look at my hand from the front, wondering what it would look like if I punched a man like that.

When I wash dishes, I always clean off the top of the microwave first, so I can put my ring there, since it is within eyesight of where I’ll be doing dishes. Same thing happens whenever I am doing cooking where I need to use my hands for meat or dough, etc.

My cats check for the ring on my finger too. If it’s ever off, one of them paws at the non-suntanned region of my finger when I pet them.

I keep the business card of the person who sold the ring to us in my wallet, in case its ever lost. The only mark on the ring is the jeweler’s engraving on the inner side (we got it from a local jeweler) and I want to make sure I can prove its mine if I lose it, by showing the card that matches the marking.

And then, I go to sleep, and I begin the process all over again.

My wedding ring is much more than an investment that really means nothing else to anyone than myself. It is my protection against insanity. It is my reassurance to my loneliness. It is the symbol that I was able to participate in a relationship that actually made it this far. (Keep in mind, I have been engaged a total of three times. 4, if you count the informal “We’ll get married once we see each other again.”)

It’s a symbol of my love and trust. It represents my fear at losing my wife, and my constant struggle to keep her with me, to be good enough for her. It calms me, and brings out the confidence in me when she smiles at me, and the reminder that she does still love me even after we have yelled at each other.

Now, when I see those episodes on TV… they’re not that funny anymore. How could you make a joke like that? Its like accidentally leaving your child on the public transit system and your funny exploits to find him or her again. It isn’t funny. At least, in my weird mind.

Friday night was me and Ken and Edna staying up late to clean the house so that we could have guests over.  We had some music playing, and everyone worked together.  We got a whole lot accomplished, and were rather proud of ourselves.  I got to bed at 4 A.M.

Waking up at 10 A.M. (which, for me, six hours is not good for sleep ), I headed out to New Jersey to pick up my two youngest brothers, who were hanging out with me for the day.  Back in Pennsylvania, we gamed for a while until it was time for the Ravens-Titans game.  We broke out all the snacks, and our friends showed up.  Jacob and Johanna came, and so did Edwin, along with a friend of his who I thought was pretty awesome and got on well with everyone there.

The football game was enormous fun to watch.  It was a great game, but in the end, Baltimore was playing better ball.  They won the game, and well-deserved.  Tennessee just made too many mistakes, and made them consistently enough that they just could not come through when it was needed.

Edwin and his friend left after the game, and I took the boys home.  Jacob, Johanna, Ken, and Edna finished creating their Dungeons and Dragons characters, and when I returned we began playing my campaign.  (Which, if anyone knows/is interested, is the Witchfire Trilogy, which I’m adapting to Fourth Edition rules.)  We played all the way til 5:30 AM. 

Unfortunately I need to make up some time and work on Sunday, so I hopped in the shower at 6 AM and made my way to work.  So here I am now, hoping I don’t fall asleep at work   Totally my fault, so I’m just gonna stick to the caffeine until I can crawl back into bed.  But I had a great weekend, and I’m so glad I was able to do everything we did.  And its thanks to the great friends I’ve got.

And I love it.

I was not sure how to answer, so he explained.  He and his wife apparently went to the zoo and saw a rivercat, who apparently enjoys water, and they said it bore some resemblance to Devil.

But the physical resemblance was not all: Devil loves to play in the water!  I had mentioned this when I gave the cats to them, but I guess it is really coming to light now.  Devil apparently “mops the floor” with the water dish, splashing water everywhere, and is absolutely enthralled with the running water in the shower.  He said that sometimes it seems like Devil’s just gonna jump in the shower!

It brought back a lot of good memories.  I miss them, and I miss being a real family, with my wife.  Good times.

I spent the majority of today finishing the new designs on the websites.  I found two new themes that I was absolutely enthralled with, and have been tweaking non-stop.  Made some internal changes, ditched the guestbook over at Spheric which was just collecting dust, and rolled out the new designs today.  Comment, give me your opinions!

Throughout that time, just thinking about life in general.  I wrote a goodbye letter to Dewi.  People may hate me, but I did literally everything I could to save my marriage.  Unfortunately, she simply didn’t want the same thing since the day we were married, and lied and cheated the whole time.  Well, she finally gave me an explanation on Christmas Eve.  She said, and I quote.  “Cheating is in my nature.  It is who I am.  YOU wouldn’t let me sleep with anyone else.  There are men out there who are okay with that.”

First off, you’re damn right I wasn’t okay with it.  If it looked like you were going to be a whore before I married you, I wouldn’t have.  But you showed me the image of loyalty and love.  And second off, whether I was okay with it or not, was irrelevant, wasn’t it?  Because you did it anyways.  I’m just glad she got used and tossed aside like the slut she is.  It makes me feel a lot better.  I treated her better than that.  I was not perfect, but I never did anything to her that was worse than what she did to me.

I also spent today chatting.  Mostly with Tianna and Savannah.  Tianna gave me some input on the site (thanks hon!) and we chatted about the most random things to enter her head (as usual.) 

Savannah and I are moving on plans for her to come visit me!  I’m so very excited.  My time in California was the happiest time of my life since my wife left me, and nothing has matched it since.  Next week, I’m going to purchase tickets for Savannah to come out and stay with me for a while.  It’s the best thing to happen to me since then.  I ran it past my roommates, so everything’s in the clear.

I’m also saving up time to go back to California.  My buddy Scott, the ever-famous Dragon Starraiser, is getting married!  And to an AWESOME woman, I might add.  Kass and I got along splendidly.  It’s always great when your good buddies get with someone you enjoy spending time with.  Then you don’t have to compete! LOL!

Hey Scott, if you read this, let me know some dates, eh?  I wanna get it all off in advance!

And an update on a possible move to California:  I just want everyone to know that a move to California is still in my future thoughts.  It isn’t the first and foremost plan.  My resume is online, and sent to a few places, but I love the job where I’m at, and it is good money.  Plus, the job market in California… well… sucks ass?  So, unless some kind of uber job comes along, I’m not actively pursuing a job at this time.  If something comes up, I’ll investigate, but I think it might be a year or two before I consider seriously planning for a job change to Sacramento.

One final note:  As you asked, Amanda, I didn’t call you yesterday.  I hope your head feels better!  (You said you were gonna take a lot of aspirin before bed, so let me know how that went!)  I’ll call you tonight after I get home from the gym.