TS, help. don't have much time to write.

me, DR, Blue captive. location unknown. took my comm.

found phone, tried Lechara's private line, 8:30p yesterday (day before? Don't know). trace call? can you?

hurry. am last one left. they've

This is Pippin.



We've had him for nearly five and a half years now.

My brother just called me to let me know a coyote got him.

I'm having an awful lot of trouble processing this at the moment. No, I lied, it just sank in.

I don't even know what else to say.

First, the Dad Report: He's close to gone at this point; apparently the rabbi came to the hospice and did the final rights earlier today. Pretty much just a matter of waiting now.

Anyway.

Spoke with Kim Novak, the director of student/campus community development for ASU Downtown, today. She was one of the people my mom contacted about the Professor Jerk issue (which has been resolved). She called me this afternoon to check up on me and my family, which was nice of her.

Anyway, one of the things that I had been kind of worried about was my financial situation at school - not only was I behind on my housing payment this semester, but I was a bit worried about my scholarship getting revoked if I missed too much school (since I still have no idea when I'm going back). As it turns out, Ms. Novak has been talking with the financial aid people annnd...

My housing is fully paid off for his semester, and possibly the next one, and my scholarship is going to be fine.

And on top of that, I also got an e-mail from Mike Wong, the director of Career Services for the Cronkite School. He sends out a message or two every week with notices about journalism-related internships and jobs that have opened up. Apparently there's going to be a basketball tournament later this month, and Reuters needs three assistants for some freelance photographers they've hired.

This job? Pays a hundred and fifty bucks a day. I don't know how long it goes for, but dude.

Well, Dad's still in bad shape but all the stress about my trip to Tucson has pretty much evaporated.

wwwwowiewww is being awesome and watching the fishes for me.

Mom spoke to the dean of the downtown campus, who in turn had words with Professor Jerk, and I'm not going to have to worry about dropping that class.

And those concert tickets I was worried about having to get rid of? Well, this morning I got a message on Facebook and a phone call from the venue that the concert date had been moved back. To six months from now. That definitely solves my problem of not being able to go, but I have no idea why it happened. I e-mailed Martin about it earlier - he of all people would probably know, since he's the one performing - but I haven't heard back from him yet. I hope everything's okay.

Or, "Cancer sucks and YouTube sucks and the universe in general sucks."

I've been trying to call my dad up every day and talk to him; for a while now, he hasn't been picking up. Last week, I was a bit surprised when he called me (although it turns out that he, technologically inept to the bitter end, had actually been trying to call my mother and hit the wrong button on his phone's contact list).

We talked for a little while; after asking me how school was going, he gave me a bit of an update on his situation. Things have apparently not been going so well, which the doctors admitted (including the phrase, or so I hear, "There's nothing we can do for you"). Dad said the doctors would be keeping him at the hospital till the end of February to finish his radiation treatments, and then he'd be going back to Tucson to stay with mom and Peter permanently. And, from previous conversations with my mom, I know that "staying permanently" is basically code for "our house is going to be a makeshift hospice".

I was still holding onto a little bit of hope, though, since a couple weeks before Mom had been telling me about some clinical trials my dad was being considered for - there's this nanite-y version of chemotherapy that's been shown to have few to no side-effects and help cancer patients out a lot. And yes, I did say nanites... how cool would that be, to have something that I've written about in Tech Support-verse as giving people superpowers actually save my dad's life in the real world? I figured that since he hadn't mentioned anything about that to me, then at least it meant he hadn't been refused for the treatment.

Still, it didn't mean that he had been accepted either, and I still don't actually know what's going on on that front.

So, the conversation goes on. Dad asks me if I've found anyone to teach me to drive yet - and I tell him I haven't but I'm working on it. Dad: "You need to get on that. I don't know when your permit expires, but I don't think I'm going to be around to take you to get it renewed."

Yeah. Way to depress the ever-loving hell out of me just before the end of the phone call, Dad.

So we said goodbye, and in order to take my mind off all of that, I start drifting around YouTube. Worked for a bit, and then I ran across this little number.  At the first chorus, I started to mist up a little. The second one, I was full-out crying. And by the last one I was hunched over, clutching a stuffed animal and sobbing harder than I think I ever have in my life. 


So yeah. Thank you, Crystal Shawanda, for reminding me that  no matter what happens, my father is probably not going to live to see my littbe brother graduate high school in two years, let alone see me get married, whenever that happens. (Yes, I realize that it was my own fault for clicking on that song. Sue me.)

Anyway. Further updates, as of yesterday.

Mom flew out to California to see Dad. She called me up and informed me that things have changed: as if things didn't suck enough, now Dad's kidneys are failing for some reason, and he's going to be transferred to the VA in Tucson by the end of this week. Past that, not a clue what's going to happen, but apparently the new time-left estimate is "a few months".

I wish there were some kind of... physical manifestation of cancer that I could just choke to death.

I hate this so much.

This semester I signed up for COM 194, or "First Friday Salon."  A quick bit of explanation, since I'm the only Phoenix regular around here: the First Friday art walk takes place on the first Friday of every month (thus the name) from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Every art gallery and studio (including the Phoenix Art Museum) is open to the public for free, and people can take self-guided tours through the city's art scene. There are also street vendors and musicians of all kinds. It's absolutely awesome. (More info can be found here.)

When I found out that there was going to be a class where I would get credit for going to this, I signed up right away. Last night was the first session of the semester, and it was the most enjoyable class I've taken in a long time (I really wish we could do it more than once a month). Here's a rundown of the evening, complete with photos.

***

4:00 p.m.
I remember that there was something posted on the class's web site that we're supposed to read prior to the lesson. I slog through eight pages of some art textbook, incredibly confused, until Adobe Reader just decides to freeze up on me. I growl at the computer and try to fix things, to no avail.

4:30 p.m.
I pack up everything I need and head downstairs to grab a quick dinner before class. On my way, I run into one of my classmates, Scarlett. She tells me she's working on the Downtown Devil, a student-run onine news'paper' for the downtown campus. Since we're friends on Facebook, she knows I like to take pictures; she asks if I'd be willing to do a photo-essay about First Friday. Even though the class is scheduled to go to one of the less-populated areas, I agree to head down to the main drag after class and get some photos for her (I had my camera on me anyway).

4:42 p.m.
I make it downstairs to the dining hall, realize I've got about ten minutes to eat if I want to make it to class on time, and proceed to have the fastest dinner ever.

4:58 p.m.
I make it to the classroom with two minutes to spare. A cute-ish guy classmate asks my name, and when I tell him, he whips out a roster and wonders why he can't find it (cue the usual first-day-of-class Alee/Courtney confusion). It's about at this point that I realize this 'classmate' is actually Professor Ferderer, and I marvel at the fact that half the class looks older than he does.

5:10 p.m.
Everyone finally makes it to the classroom (out of the twenty or so people there, I'm the only one from the downtown campus, so most people got stuck in traffic and/or lost on the way) and we start. Professor Ferderer introduces himself - even though it sounds like he knows a few of the students well already - and Dean Corey, the dean of the University College and co-creator of this course. We go over the syllabus, including course requirements and acceptable behavior: "Most of this class takes place outside the classroom, and I know there are certain... temptations at the art walk. You're all adults, so I'm not going to slap you on the wrist if I see you with a beer, but a lot of your grade comes from the discussions we have at the end of class. Critical thinking is hard to do if you're... not... coherent. Just try to remember class is over at nine, the art walk goes until eleven, and bars don't close until two in the morning. Try to hold off." It occurs to me that I must be one of the younger students in the class.

We quickly go over the reading, the main point of which was apparently that art is affected by both the creator's and viewer's perception. We are asked to take notes on what we see when we leave, and to keep the following things in mind:

1. How do your own lived experiences shape the way a piece of art communicates to you?
2. What makes a piece of art valuable? What factors lead you to assign a particular value to a work of art?
3. How does the social and cultural world shape your views?

We're given maps of downtown Phoenix, a schedule of events, and we're off.

5:45 p.m.
We take the light-rail down to the Phoenix Art Museum, and are given forty-five minutes of free rein. I wander the first floor and take notes on whatever happens to catch my eye - even though I'm not sure what I'm supposed to write. Eventually I make it over to the exhibit of Asian art, and I find this...

...and I have to try very hard not to start crying in the middle of the gallery because it reminds me so much of my father (or, more specifically, of a gift my father gave me when I was six or seven - a red kimono with cranes on it, which I loved so much that I didn't want to get rid of it even when I outgrew it).

I move on to a display of samurai weapons and armor.
I also come across a copy of the Qu'ran, which has a lot written in the margins and looks very well-loved by whoever had owned it. I decide that it has value - sentimental to someone, if nothing else.

6:20 p.m.
I move on, into a gallery of paintings by someone named Philip C. Curtis. It's not incredibly interesting, but one of his paintings catches my eye.

I spend the next several minutes just staring, wondering what could possibly be behind those masks.

6:32 p.m.
I realize that I've got less than fifteen minutes and two floors of the museum I haven't even gotten to yet. I run upstairs, and spend some time looking at various portraits. Nothing exceptionally interesting, but one did remind me of Mindtheft, in a weird way.

I also run into another one of my classmates. We introduce ourselves (his name is David, he's a sophomore and an architecture major at the Tempe campus) and start talking for a little while, until I realize we have three minutes to get back to the entrance. Speaking of the entrance...

...this is shiny.

6:45 p.m.
We board a shuttle that takes us to the Grand Avenue galleries. On the way, David and I meet a guy named Christian who's an art major at ASU and who is going to be selling some of his paintings later that night. The shuttle also passes Hob Nobs, the coffee shop where we'll be having our discussion at the end of class. Professor Ferderer informs us that since the shuttle only goes one way, we'll have to walk there, and that means we'll be going through 1.38 miles of downtown Phoenix on foot, at night. A collective groan goes up from most of the class.

7:00 p.m.
We arrive at Grand Avenue, and there is momentary panic when we realize we've lost the Dean. He shows up several minutes later, telling us he decided to drive. Now that we're all together, we take a look around. Grand Avenue is very dark and very creepy. We opt to stick together this time.

As we start to explore, one of my classmates points across the street and asks quietly, "Hey... is that a tranny hooker?" As it turns out, it is. Huh.

7:15 p.m.
Our first stop is Yuko Yabuki's gallery. Ms. Yabuki seemed really interested in the concept of the class, so another guy and I spend some time talking with her about it. I only remember to snap a picture just as our group leaves, and unfortunately very little of the actual art is visible.

7:30 p.m.
Next we go to a gallery showcasing a Sue Chenoweth's "Predators and Prey" series, which is little more than a dozen canvases full of random splotches of color. But since True Art is Incomprehensible, the artist rather snootily informs us all that they are a study in what makes people afraid, namely violent and gruesome death, and that she did months and months of research before painting each of these "reactions". This rant comes just after one of my classmates looks at "Pollard and Ramsdell on the 94th Day" and comments that it looks like a polar bear, when the painting apparently really depicts two sailors lost at sea, clutching the bones of the crewmates they presumably ate to stay alive. (I have no photographic evidence of this one, but it really does look like a polar bear.)

7:45 p.m.
We leave and start heading back toward Hob Nobs. We realize that half the class has vanished; Professor Ferderer freaks out, since we all were together just a little while before. One girl calls her friend (one of the missing ones) up, and we learn that they went on to a different gallery down the road.

7:55 p.m.
We meet up with the rest of the class at the Trunk Space, a small gallery/coffehouse. We spend a few minutes there as Ferderer does a head count.

I find a piece of art that immediately makes me think of schizoauthoress</lj> ...

...and one that makes me think of ladydragonryder</lj> , for different reasons.


8:30 p.m.
We finally get to Hob Nobs and have our end-of-class discussion. One of the more interesting topics (obviously a reference to the polar-bear-versus-dead-people issue) is whether the vision of the artist or the viewer matters more than the other. Class ends at nine, and I'm left thinking that this is the coolest class ever.

9:30 p.m.
I take the light rail back to Roosevelt Row, which is apparently the epicenter of First Friday (it's the only part I've been to before, since it's only a few blocks from my residence hall). During the first couple minutes of my walk through, I pass Scientologists, anti-Scientology protestors in Guy Fawkes masks, a preacher giving a sermon atop an overturned milk crate, and a gaggle of atheists, all standing in a row on the same block and shouting over one another to make their messages heard. It all comes off as slightly ridiculous.

9:40 p.m.
I turn on my camera to take a picture and it promptly dies. Cue angry muttering.

10:00 p.m.
Morbid curiosity prompts me to stop and watch a one-man act call the Cutthroat Freakshow. The guy lifts weights on hooks attached to his eyelids, hammers a huge nail up his nose, and jumps onto a pile of broken glass in his bare feet. I spend most of this show cringing and wondering if there's a less painful way to get your rent paid.

10:10 p.m.
I run into some people I've seen before - a henna-tattoo artist named Fran and her husband Sam. I chat with them for a while. Fran gives me one of the henna kits she's selling, free of charge because I'm nice, apparently. Which was sweet of her.

10:30 p.m.
I stop to listen to a guy singing and playing his guitar, and am shocked that I'm the only one staying and listening since he's really good. I want to tip him, but I only have a twenty and a debit card, so I just go up to him and tell him how great he was instead. He and I talk for a while; he tells me about his band and the album he's just about to release, and I tell him about the photo-essay I'm supposedly doing. He and I commiserate about how cameras just love to fail when you really need them, and he invites me to a show he's playing in Mesa next Sunday. (His website, by the way.)

11:00 p.m.
The booths start to close down, and I call it a night.

Ashes.

No, seriously.

Back in third grade, we were studying the cultures of the world, and after each unit we'd get to do something fun. After we'd finished studying China, we got to learn how to make fortune cookies. We got little strips of paper to write fortunes on ("Nothing bad," the teacher warned, "No put-downs!"), folded the dough around them, and the teacher set them to bake in the cafeteria's oven - for a few minutes too long, it turned out. Once they were done, the teacher mixed the cookies up so we would get a different fortune than the one we'd written, and we sat down to open up our slightly-charred prizes.

I sat down with the fortune cookie I'd gotten, cracked it open, and...

Where I expected a little slip of paper to fall out, a little sprinkling of ash drifted down onto the tabletop instead. While we had been taught how to fold the cookie dough properly, that didn't mean that didn't mean that every single one of us did it right. Somebody had left the fortune sticking out of the cookie they'd made, and when it went into the oven, the paper burned right up.

I didn't figure that out until much later, because I was far too busy being creeped out about getting a fortune cookie full of freakin' ashes.

Huh. That's... smaller than I thought it was going ot be.

Anyway. If you can't see what's in the red box there, it's...

FIVE THOUSANNND downloads!

I'm sorry but that's just awesome.

\o/

And now for something on a far less depressing note.

A few friends and I were discussing our class schedules for this semester. All four of us are journalism students, so we're required to take JMC 201 (News Reporting and Writing). The four of us managed not to get put into the same section of the class (that's what we get for all registering at different times, I suppose), so we were asking the which professors everyone had gotten. I'm in Russell's class, Duyen is in Bowser's... Jenny is in Doom's.

None of us believed her, but she swore she wasn't making it up. I checked the class listings, and there is in fact a section of JMC 201 taught by a Justin Doom.

While that section could fit into my schedule, there are no open seats. But if somebody switches out, I totally want to transfer in.

Because, come on. How awesome would it be to have a class taught by Dr. Doom?

XD

Lately when people talk to me, they're asking after my father's health (that makes sense, as I posted somewhere else a few months ago that he was about to have some surgery and I was worried for him). I realize the most I've said has been something along the lines of, "Better than he was yesterday," and that isn't much. Now I actually know what's going on, so I'll tell. I need to get this off my chest anyway.

My father's been pretty sick for a while; we found out this past August that he had some cancer cells near his right lung. Those were removed in an operation in early September, and all was supposed to be well. Some radiation treatments were supposed to take place after the surgery, but my dad wasn't reacting well to them, so they stopped with those.

Dad's health randomly went on the decline again, and he was hospitalized in November (I spent my Thanksgiving holiday with my family housesitting for him in Lancaster, driving an hour each way to the VA hospital in Los Angeles to visit him, and strangely, having Thanksgiving dinner with his neighbors - people I had never met before - and he wasn't there to enjoy it too). He didn't want to be kept in the hospital, so at the end of November he went and stayed with my mother and brother in Tucson, to see if he could get some recovery in there.

I spent the first half of winter break helping take care of him at home, and the 'recovery' part wasn't going quite as well as I'd hoped it would. My dad has always been a pretty big guy, and he'd lost a lot of weight and wasn't eating much; he's had breathing problems as long as I've known him (he used to smoke a lot, but he quit when I was six or seven), but it had gotten bad enough that he couldn't even walk across the living room without having to stop and take a break. All this, and without any real explanation as to why it was happening.

Mom drove Dad back up to California just after New Years since he thought he was feeling well enough to take care of himself; he stayed at home and one of his neighbors would come by every so-often to make sure he was getting on all right. After a bit less than a week, we got a call from the neighbor, saying he had come in and seen my dad lying on the floor - he'd fallen, and had apparently been there for hours without a way to get up. So James (the neighbor) took Dad back to the VA. Dad didn't know why he was being admitted to the hospital - he said he didn't remember falling - and asked to leave. His doctor was on vacation for the rest of the week; the substitute doctor was fine with releasing him.

So, pausing right there for a second, this doctor heard that not only did my father have a nasty fall, but he couldn't actually remember falling - and he also heard from my mother, who had spoken to Dad, that Dad was slurring his speech oddly and occasionally talking about completely incoherent nonsense - and this doctor was still cool with letting my father go back home. This was the doctor's explanation: "I'm not his regular doctor, so I don't have a baseline to compare his behavior to. No, I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't care if you've known him for thirty years and know for a fact this isn't the way he normally speaks; he would know his own health better than you, so I'm releasing him."

Eventually, after talking to about half a dozen more hospital personnel over the phone, Mom managed to make sure that Dad would get an MRI or something; she was worried that he had had a small stroke. The MRI took about two forevers to do; after finding no evidence of a stroke, they released Dad from the hospital at one in the morning. And then called him in for an appointment about eight hours later. Because that makes way more sense than just having him stay overnight.

Mom drove back up to California to make sure that a.) Dad actually stayed when he was admitted to the hospital this time, and b.) that the hospital staff didn't all collectively act as idiotic as that one doctor had been. That didn't really work out at first; the running diagnosis was basically, "Well, beats me," since the results of the last scan they'd done on Dad showed no signs of anything weird or disease-like. They continued shrugging their shoulders when Dad started hallucinating every so-often.

Of course, then the doctors put their heads together and figured out that the last scan they had was from just after the surgery from four months ago, oops. So they scurried off to do another one and actually get some current information. Now comes the fun part.

The surgeons managed to miss some of the cancerous cells, which stuck around afterward and multiplied. So now my dad has a cancerous mass the size of my fist sitting on the outside of his right lung, cutting off about half his air supply (thus the trouble staying up and walking around) while also crushing his stomach (thus the trouble being able to eat), and as an added bonus it's throwing off excess calcium (thus the hallucinations). He's at the VA for the next few weeks; doctors are trying to get enough nutrition to him that he'll be okay for more radiation treatments to shrink the mass, which will allow him to breathe easier and walk around and eat actual food and turn back into someone resembling my father.

Only, even if the radiation treatments work this time and all that awesome-sounding stuff happens, it'll only happen for a year, tops. If the radiation doesn't work, my dad may not have another six months to live.

He really has been sounding a lot better when I've spoken to him the last week or so, but it's still so hard to think that whatever happens, by this time next year - barring some sort of miracle - I'm not going to have a father. I  can't even put into words how horrible it feels knowing that.

Things I need to do this week:

Today
-Math final (please, just kill me now)
-Laundry
-Start packing
-Figure out how/when I'm actually going home
-Last Spanish assignment
-Update GP scorecard
-Start editing System Crash
-Study group for Spanish

Tomorrow
-Spanish final
-Mail Christmas presents
-Sell textbooks back to bookstore
     -Get ripped off
-Make housing payment and return paperwork/old room-key
-Return library books
     -Pay overdue fees
-(Hopefully) spend time with a few people before I leave them for a month
-Pack some more
-Study

Wednesday
-History/Priniciples of Journalism final
-Find some scholarships to apply for
-Try to figure out schedule for next semester
-Finish packing
-Make dorm room look presentable
     -Clear out fridge, unplug electronics, hide toaster oven
-Leave (?)

And no, I'm not entirely sure where sleeping and eating figure into this equation at all right now.

Because this guest speaker in JMC 110 is alternately boring me to death and freaking me out.

Ganked from cleolinda.

01. Answer each of the questions below the cut using the [Flickr] search engine. (ETA: I've changed the URL so it will automatically search "Most Interesting" for you.)
02. Choose a photo from the first three pages.
03. Copy the URL of your favorite photos [here].
04. Then share with the world.





( Questions and Answers )

My friend Christine and I went to Starbucks after English class this morning. We do this pretty frequently, since Starbucks happens to be on the ground floor of our building (a fact that I'm beginning to hate since, even though it means I can get my hands on a chai tea Frapuccino pretty much whenever I want to, it also means my money gets sucked away that much faster). We got our lattes and scones and took them to the back of the place, which is full of really comfy armchairs and sofas.

As we entered that part of the shop, a guy I knew from the sixth floor--Randall--got up from the sofa by the window and passed us on his way out. Christine and I grabbed a couple of armchairs, plugged in our computers so we could make changes to the English assignment we'd just gone over in class, and started in on our respective breakfasts. (And to anyone reading this who frequents Starbucks: the gingersnap latte tastes pretty foul without at least two sugars, but the peppermint mocha twist is absolutely delicios.)

Not two minutes later we heard a pair of high heels click-clacking their way toward us. I looked up. There, standing in front of me, was a blonde woman, late thirties to early forties maybe. She was well-dressed, so I figured she was one of the businessperson types that always seemed to be at Starbucks (it's a college campus but it's also right in the middle of downtown Phoenix and a ton of office buildings). She was glancing around, looking nervous.

"Excuse me," she said to Christine and me, "but have either of you seen a cell phone lying around? I left here about five minutes ago, and I think I may have left it here by accident."

I told her honestly that no, we hadn't, but we really hadn't been looking for one.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "I was sitting over there last time I saw my phone." And she pointed to the sofa by the window.

"There was a guy sitting over there when we came in," Christine told her. "Maybe he found it and gave it to someone at the counter."

"He didn't. I already asked over there and no one had turned a phone in."

"Well, I know him, and I seem to run into him a lot," I said.

"And he's in my grammar class," Christine added.

"So if I see him, I'll ask about it," I told her. "Could I get another number I can reach you at once I do?"

She smiled, introduced herself as Karen "who works for the school" and gave me another phone number. I wrote it down.

"Thank you so much," she said. "I wouldn't normally be this worried, but I have family flying in from Michigan today and the only phone number of mine they've got is that one."

She had to go to work, so she left shortly after this. Christine and I continued talking, and it turned out that she had mistaken Randall for a different guy in her class. I told her no, that was Isaac. When I pointed out that, compared to Randall, Isaac was a couple inches shorter with more muscle, slightly lighter skin, and a rounder face, she sort of stared at me. I think I pay a bit too much attention to people that way. (Hey, I've done both journalism and forensics. You need to be observant for both of those.) So, since it turned out I was the only one who knew Randall, solving the Mystery of the Missing Cell Phone fell to me.

( And this is where this whole tale starts to get stupid. )