Had a lovely festival yesterday, which ended up being a combination of Olympieia (a festival of Zeus) and Earth Day (on which it only makes sense to honor Gaia). Also, I finally got my phone to talk to my laptop, so I finally got caught up on the newsletter, which can be found here, for those who are interested in/amused by our modern interpretations of the old Greek religion.

Aside: had a very funny moment at work that started with a coworker producing a penis pop, continued with me showing pics from the Rural Dionysia, and hit the punch line with coworker asking if I was Greek Orthodox. Erm, not exactly in the sense of not remotely? LOL

One batch of pictures remains trapped in my camera from Delphinia. I stupidly forgot to put the SD chip in, can't locate the USB cord that fits the camera, and if it's possible to transfer stuff from internal memory to the SD chip, I can't for the life of me figure out how. I'd have been better off taking said photos with my phone after all, considering that's working again. *facepalm*

Of course, what I probably should have been writing is this daunting letter of intent. If I'm to have any hope of starting in the fall, it needs to be done soon. I just really suck at "Hi, I'm wonderful, and here's 500-750 words of why"-type stuff.

In other news, bluedolfyn is visiting the East Coast and I get to hang out with her tomorrow! W00t!

Yesterday was graduation. Yes, I graduated in December, but we only had the pinning ceremony then. This was the cap-and-gown deal. Due to having used up all my pool time (mostly on just getting through school in the first place without collapsing from exhaustion, but most recently brought the total down to near-zero by going to Aeternitas), I took off neither the night before nor the night after. Thus, the day is mostly a blur, though I do vaguely recall seeing and hugging classmates I'd not seen since December or so, so that was nice. Relying on others for pics though, as I did bring but did not use my camera at all.

Oh! One very memorable bit was seeing the prof I've been known to call Canon!Snape as grand high poohbah or whatever the official term is for the person who gets to carry the college's mace and pound it on the floor to punctuate things. That was ... very fitting. :-D

Fun was getting the voicemail after that work would like me to come in at 8pm please. I returned the call, pointed out I hadn't been to sleep yet since my previous shift, which they actually knew, and thus if they wanted me remotely functional, they'd muddle through and I'd be in at midnight as scheduled. Fortunately, the per diem who was on until 8 was able to stay till midnight. Well, fortunately by some lights. One of these days, I'd like my boss to actually have to fill in one of these gaps, as he is actually required to do but has never, ever done.

Did watch "The Rebel Flesh." Am very WTF about it. ( Spoilers! )

Thanks to a tweet from The Moff (Only matters to me, but today is the 6th anniversary of the broadcast of my first Dr Who. Blimey! But it's not the end of world ... oh!!), I also rewatched The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances at work last night. That's always fun, and I finally caught the explanation of something that I'd thought was a continuity error all this time. Jack is never shown seeing the outside of the TARDIS, so it always seemed a bit weird when he finally entered that he commented about it being "much bigger on the inside." He did, however, comment on it to the Doctor when Rose first introduced them, mentioning that he'd seen it when he'd thrown the Chula ambulance in front of them as bait and complimenting the paneling on their "capsule." Huh. Love finding little stuff like that.

Have this week off from tutoring. Plan is currently to dress all interviewy, grab a stack of resumes and the Yellow Pages, and apply in person to every nursing home within driving distance. After that, I think I'm left with making paper airplanes out of them and launching them at utter random.

Stopped at the local comic shop after graduation, ostensibly to check my folder (which had the latest DW comic, yay!) but mainly to follow up on a convo I'd just had with dawnrune about the possibility of a fic-writer meetup-and-write group along the lines of a wrimo whilst not waiting around for November. Turns out, there's already something in the works, which is kinda cool. Emphasis will, understandably, be on writers and artists who do manga/anime and gamer stuff, but open to whomever. That could be cool. In other news, I'm hoping that the added free time this week will see me finally a) trying to expand at least one or two of the drabbles I did at Aeternitas and b) trying out some of the spreads and concepts from ceciliatan's workshop on using the Tarot with writing.

Also need to write up something about Thargelia for the HTAZP blog. *winces* It's been a week already. Oops. And I need to get cracking if I'm going to do an additional choreography for Philokhoria on top of the troupe choreo I'm teaching the others. I'm thinking "Fireflies," though "Sandansko" and "Graovsko" are also possibilities. So just a few things on the to-do list then.

Hugs to all that want them, and have a great week!

Depending on how you count it, either today, tomorrow, or Monday is Kwan Yin's birthday, the first of Her three big feast days in the year. As I mentioned awhile back, one of my "assignments" this year is to lead a small ritual for Her at the Spring Festival, which we're actually doing next Sunday due to scheduling issues.

( Lengthy stuff about designing ritual, cultural contexts, and that sort of thing. )

Hoo, boy, have I got a lot of catching up to do! So, things that I'm grateful for, more or less associated with days on which I was particularly grateful for them.

Sun 8/15 - A Sunday with no commitments whatsoever to actually relax.
Mon 8/16 - A friend got good news on her husband's health status, which may not yet be great but is improving.
Tue 8/17 - Last visit with the in-laws of the summer. Sort of a mixed grat, but mainly that it went all right despite a near-fiasco assembling MiL's new flat-screen tv. And then disassembling it and packing it back up to be returned. After losing screws inside the tv set itself. It's actually very funny in retrospect.
Wed 8/18 - For being able to make lemonade out of lemons and spend a day at Kripalu doing yoga and workshops and hanging out with ubiquirk, whose other vacation plans had fallen through.
Thu 8/19 - Patsfan's birthday. Ummm. That we got to have a little time together despite work.
Fri 8/20 - Discovered flu shots available already! Got one before school could start nagging about it! (Later learned they've decided not to make it a requirement unless our specific assigned hospitals require it after all, but I was still very psyched Walgreens was offering them already. Regardless, it's done, and with the way the asthma has been, I should probably be getting it, required or not.)
Sat 8/21 - For the opportunity to spend a day with my new niece. I'd been feeling oddly disconnected, having only seen her at the hospital and then one other brief visit. So having a day of babysitting was actually very nice.
Sun 8/22 - That despite the rain, RI Pagan Pride Day went off well. (Note to self: next time, remember your audience when referring to Pagan Pride Day as PPD. Fellow nursing students are likely to misinterpret. *g*) Also, that people were so receptive to the Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan ritual. Usually, PPD closing rituals are a bit more open/generic. But folks were very receptive, whether they participated or observed. Also grateful to Tim for opening up the last round of libations to other Gods. Obviously, I included Kwan Yin. Another Temple member later said he'd bet someone I'd do that. My response? "Seriously, what idiot took that bet? That was a gimme!"
Mon 8/23 - I think I spent most of the day in bed recovering from the weekend. I think I've already been grateful for having a day to do that earlier this month, so I need to come up with something else. Unfortunately, as that is probably all I did, I'm not sure what else there is!
Tue 8/24 - New student orientation went well. Other GSA members showed this time as well, so we got to hang out a bit. Got quite a few people interested in joining too.
Wed 8/25 - Local library has wifi, making it a safe place to escape to whilst the landlord cut a hole in our bedroom wall. (Originally tried staying home, just at the other end of the apartment. Lungs decided that wasn't good enough.)
Thu 8/26 - Kind of covered by drive-by post: 1st day back was survived.
Fri 8/27 - Personality Disorder Role-Play Theater! No, seriously, that was the absolute best part of the whole day. The prof who designed this should do more stuff like this instead of reading her PowerPoints to us. Interactivity=much better learning experience. I got to be Adam Avoidant, which probably came off more like Social Anxiety Disorder than Avoidant Personality Disorder, but seemed to more or less work anyway.
Sat 8/28 - Angel Food Ministries. So far, I'm very pleased with the program and the site. This month, I had enough leftover frozen meats that I just got the fruit & veggie box, and it all looked good when I unpacked it. We'll see whether that continues once we get into fall and winter and things are out of season, but for now, it's working out really well.
Sun 8/29 - I'm grateful that my other niece (on Patsfan's side) is progressing well enough in her pregnancy that her shower today is still on. There have been concerns about placenta previa and possible pre-eclampsia, so this is definitely a non-trivial thing. Just about a month to go. Looking forward to meeting my third great-niece. (Well, second great-niece. Other is a great-nephew. Again, where is the gender-neutral collective for this relationship? Grrr.)