summercomfort

I've got so many! :S

Today:
- Go to a Nanhai talk with dad
- Figure out plan for rest of the year for WR (2 hr)
- Figure out plan for rest of the year for Mand1 (2 hr)
- Figure out plan for rest of the year for MWH (30 min)
- Polish all the powerpoints received for SAN thus far.
- Do grocery shopping (and buy some tablecloths for SAN, too. Plus perioding materials)
- Do Laundry

Monday:
- Teach all day. Oy vey.
- Finalize all the SAN stuff, send out email with the Program

Tuesday:
- SAN!!!

Then I can go back to a regular work load again. :)

Yesterday we had a full day of Make thai curry + Taiko + visit Chris in the hospital + Clean up the house + have a friend from School over for curry and Power Grid. Tomorrow I'll be teaching all of my classes, followed by taking the train to ATT park to play taiko at a Giants game. So today is a very needed day to rest and recoup.

Things to do today:

- Do laundry

- Finish grading Christianity tests
- Write MWH test
- Update Islam DBQ assignment

- Drink boba
- Buy shampoo
- Do Chinese School stuff

- Print Amazon return slip
- Pack/prepare for taiko tomorrow

8pm-10pm: Watch Spamalot at my school with Jono.

This week I was simultaneously:
- setting up a FB anime-watching club
- dealing with various fallout from last Friday's meeting related to Faculty Council
- helping my parents figure out a feasible way forward on various Chinese School dvd shenanigans
- releasing the Faculty Council survey and dealing with responses to that
- running a 9th grade team retreat
- managing submissions and logistics for Student Achievement Night

Plus I marathon-ed Breakout Kings and finally graded some Forgiveness essays.

Needless to say, by this afternoon, I was pretty much done with talking to people. But we had a send-off party/roast for our head of school, and then Jono had gamers over in the evening. So now I'm REALLY done talking to people.

This weekend is unfortunately quite busy -- I'd like to make some food for Chris tomorrow morning, but we might not have the necessary ingredients and time to make "mushy" stuff. Then it's taiko, followed by visiting Chris in the hospital! There was a funland thing in Oakland/Berkeley that I was hoping to visit with my high school friends, but I think visiting Chris is more important.

I also totally forgot my Forgiveness Essay grading at school, so I should pick those up tomorrow morning.

Then on Sunday Jono and I will be performing at the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival in Memorial Park at 3:30pm, which should be pretty cool to see if you're in the area. We've been learning some new songs, but unfortunately won't have a chance to perform them, but we'll be doing Kenka Yatai, which is an "oldie but goodie". I'd like to make an egg custard pie for the taiko potluck that we're doing afterwards.

Then it's back to work!

I've been super sleepy this week, but my BBT hasn't really moved. I'm not sure what's going on -- bouts of sleepiness are no fun because sleep is one of those things that really affects my mood. I also woke up this morning with a serious case of the sniffles, and have been sneezy and woozy all day, so I think I'm coming down with something. Hopefully something not too serious.

This is a surprise to no one, but I remain over-committed to a variety of things.

I am, however, thinking about all the things that I'm committed to, and both (a) what I *want* to do, and (b) where I can do the most good.

Teaching history
- I think it's the thing I like to do the most -- most interesting day-to-day, and most fun to do curriculum for.

Designing Chinese education curriculum
- It... turns out I have a lot of opinions about this?! And I think it's something that can be helpful for other people... I want to work on this over the summer and see if I can disseminate it.

Designing education games
- I have good ideas, but really no good way of implementing them. Maybe I should find a education game company who's willing to let me consult?

Narrative comics
- I want to tell stories that have to do with history and people, but they take a long time. I'm hoping to finally have some time to work on this in the summer.

Educational comics
- I think I'm better at doing these, and there is a lot of untapped potential here, so I'm wondering if I should go back to this.

A certain someone got a tumblr: http://eatapony.tumblr.com
I've added a relevant DW rss feed: eatapony_tumblr_feed

(Aside: for those lamenting the death of GReader, why not just put all your feeds in either LJ or DW? Their feed collation system has been decently functional for the last 10 years)

Also, for those of you who follow potofsoup.tumblr.com -- you may have to re-follow it -- I've made it a fan-stuff blog separate from summercomfort.tumblr.com, which would be the "me replying and reposting to friends" portion.

Finally, there was a new addition to http://potofsoup.tumblr.com recently -- Black Jack fanart.

Guess I didn't have to wait a week to find out ... the cramps and the massive bleeding came today, so it's back to square 1.

I wish society doesn't have this weird ettiquette of not telling people until the 2nd trimester. There were times this weekend at the conference when I wanted to say, "Hey, I want to take it easy -- I don't want to lose mah baby." :( The most vulnerable 3 months should not be passed in silence and awkwardness.

I've had irregular periods forever, and mom wanted to help me fix that, so...

Apr 2011, my Chinese medicine doctor advises me to start taking Basal Body Temperature. Ideal BBT would be low until ovulation, and then high until menstruation. For me, it was all over the place.

Nov 2011, we figure out that I've been using an inaccurate thermometer, so we start over. It's still all over the place.

January 2012 was when we decided, "hey, having a baby wouldn't be the end of the world, but we shouldn't try super hard or anything."

( long, long, LONG account of my many medical travails )

The most frustrating thing about this whole experience, is the UNCERTAINTY. There's the 5 days around ovulation time of "is this the right time? Is it going to work? Oh shit, is this ovulation spotting or is my uterine lining abandoning me?" Then there's 10 days of just twiddling my thumbs, followed by 5 days of complete ambiguity -- all the physical signs in those 5 days could be EITHER "you're pregnant!" OR "you're so not pregnant!" It felt like being an auger of your own body. Are these cramps implantation cramps, or menstrual cramps? Is this spotting menstrual spotting, or implantation spotting? Is 36.8 a high BBT or a low one? This continues until either the period happens, or, more common in my case, I give up and pretend some spotting counts as a period.

On the one hand, considering all of the factors that had to be aligned to make it happen ... the ovarian follicle had to mature ... there had to be sperm chillin' in the fallopian tube at that time ... the resulting blastocyst has to wander down to the uterus ... the uterine lining has to be thick enough for implantation... it's kind of amazing that babies happen at all. But on the other hand, hope springs eternal. :/ It's total emotional whiplash, and let's just say that getting a period is kind of a crappy consolation prize.

By February 2013, it's been half a year of this frustration of uncertainty. Jono and I were both sick in February, so I was like, "not gonna happen this month". But then my BBT went up and stayed up! And then I got weird stomach cramps, so I was like, "implantation??! but it's 2 days too late!" 4 days later, which is last Friday, I got weird stomach cramps *again*, so I was like, "????? do I have ectoplasm?". At the same time, OvuView decided to re-calculate ovulation and menstruation predictions to be a week later, so I was like, "Am I on day 15 after ovulation, or Day 7 after ovulation??" So I go see my regular doctor, and we do a blood test. The blood test for pregnancy came back as "Inconclusive." .... WTF?

It turns out that pregnancy tests, whether blood test or urine test, measures the amount of HCG in your body. Ignoring the units, bascially HCG doubles every 2 days or so until 1600 units. When you have <5, you're not pregnant, and when you have >25, you're pregnant. I was in the 5-25 range last Friday, hence, "inconclusive" -- it could go back down, in which case the implantation was unsuccessful, or it could go up, and I can form babby. So even though pregnancy is often seen as a "2 lines=yes, 1 line=no" dichotomy, it's actually more like "faint line = maybe, stronger line = more likely". This is not accounting for the sensitivity of various pregnancy tests -- some don't trigger until 100 units of HCG, and others trigger at 10 units. In attempting to get all the data to make sense, I'm guessing that I might have ovulated on Feb 21st? (But then what's the deal with the positive ovulation test a week earlier?)

I've been using a super sensitive test every 2 days since Friday, and the line has been getting stronger, though it's still not as clear as I think it should be, so now I can say I'm 80% certain that I'm pregnant. I've scheduled an appointment with a new ob/gyn for next Tuesday, which should confirm it.

So I think the moral of the story is (1) give up on doctors for a while, (2) flail about wildly and get sick lots, and (3) smart phone apps can be helpful sometimes.

Suppose you are applying for a job. But this application process works in a special way: You send in your application, and then 2 weeks later, you look to see in the Classifieds section whether the position is filled or not. If it's filled, then it means you get the job. If not, you'll just have to send in another application. The more applications you send in, the more likely it is that you get the job.

That's not *too* bad, right? It might mean that after submitting your application, you anxiously check the classified's every day, and it might mean you send in lots of applications.

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But then you find out that the office that receives applications is only open for one day a month. Clearly, if you find out that the office is open *and then* you send the application, it'd be too late -- you have to send the application in ahead of time, and account for the 1-3 days it takes in the mail system.

Well, that's not too bad, since it means instead of sending in applications every day, you can just time it correctly. Unfortunately, the only way to find out if the office is open or not is to drive by the office every morning and taking a guess, based on the number of people buying coffee in the corner coffee shop. When there's more people in the coffee shop that morning, that might mean the office is going to be open that day.

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Then there's *my* special case. My local office is kind of sketchy -- for as long as I can remember, they don't post "Wanted" ads at all -- I can only send in applications willy nilly and hope I catch them on a day when the office is open. I've tried driving by the coffee shop in the morning, but the number of people there fluctuate so much there's no way of detecting any sort of pattern. But you know, as long as I keep sending in applications, it's bound to work, right?

A year later, I find out that instead of being open once a month, my local office is NEVER open. That explains why there aren't "Wanted" ads.

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So what can I do about this?

I can go hire some professionals -- they're expensive, and it's hard to work with their demanding schedule, but what they would do is go knock on the door of the office and poke around until they force the office to open. They also might mess up the neighboring office, but hey, it's pretty direct.

I can also consult some guys who know people -- they're less expensive, and more willing to work around your schedule, and their method is less invasive -- they'd go ask around, maybe volunteer to help keep the office open, etc. But their method requires patience.

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I've been consulting with the 2nd group for a long time -- one guy said he could make it happen in 4 months. It didn't work. Another guy said it'd take half a year or more. That didn't work. I've also met with the professionals a few times, but they're kind of scary -- they're super good at the hard sell, and they're frustratingly bad at listening to me.

So in September of last year, I decided to stop consulting with both groups.

Y'all know what I'm talking about here, right? ;)

So I've been working on "Tisquantum" off and on since October. I finally wrote a general story (4 Acts) that I'm okay with, and then I wrote a script for Act 1, which I'm now slowly working through.

I've posted the first 3 pages here: http://sushusketches.dreamwidth.org/17497.html

I'd love your feedback!

Just finished my week-long comics course at school. Wanna see what the students made? It's here: http://www.sushux.net/menlocomics/

These kids started with pretty much no knowledge about comics (most of them cited Archie Comics or Calvin and Hobbes as their favorite comics...) so I'm super proud of what they were able to accomplish in a mere week. (Roughly 15 hrs from start to finish.)