Phantom of the Opera – He’s inside my mind alright!

This is an entry I posted a while ago on another blog of mine, but just recently it happened all over again. It took me a while to find the entry but once I did it was quite scary to see just how similar the two situations were. Happy reading.

Does this situation sound familiar?

It’s late. You’re tired, but you can’t seem to fall asleep. You keep tossing and turning, hoping that in time you’ll drift off. An hour ticks by. Another hour. Another. You’re still awake. The reason? You have a song playing over and over in your head and it’s driving you insane.

If this has ever happened to you, don’t worry. You’re not alone! If this hasn’t happened to you then I strongly suggest you manage to keep it that way. It’s torture!

This morning at 3 AM, I woke up and I was incredibly thirsty. I got up out of bed, opened my door and walked drowsily into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of juice. I happily drank the cool peachy liquid, and shuffled off back to my bedroom so that I could get some more sleep before morning. I laid down and covered myself up with various sheets and blankets. As time slowly passed, I realised I wasn’t falling back asleep. In fact, I was getting more awake with each passing moment. This happens to me all the time, so I knew it to be no surprise. In most cases, I usually tough it out and wait for half an hour or so. I usually fall back into sleep no problem – but today was different. It was “one of those” moments. I had the main theme song from “Phantom of the Opera” playing over, and over and over and over in my head. Particularly the one line; “Inside my mind.” If you’ve listened to the music you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The first hour (3:00 – 4:00) was okay. I mean, sure it bothered me that I couldn’t fall back to sleep, but I wasn’t upset to tears about it. The next hour (4:00 – 5:00) started to really get on my nerves. That one line (and some stupid others) were playing in my head so frequently I thought I was going to go insane. What’s more is, the harder I tried to stop thinking about it, the more I did. Finally 6 AM rolled around and I said to myself “Screw it. I’ll get up.” I went back to the kitchen and I found my Dad sitting at the table having his daily coffee before work. I decided to eat breakfast and go watch some television to take my mind of the song. It worked, but sheesh! Talk about a bad night. It’ll be a long time before I can listen to Phantom of the Opera again.

Has this ever happened to you?

The Crash Phase

Being sad is being human. We all go through cycles of depression that can make our world crumble. Not only is this harmful emotionally to yourself, but it can effect the people around you in this manner as well. A great deal of time was spent working out a system that takes us through what I call “The Crash Phase”, a moment in time where depression first starts to effect your body. This calculated phase is a personal representation of my own life, but it some situations can be applied globally to all persons.

Please note the chart does not describe what you’re seeking as “happiness”. It could be anything from material to romance. Please also note that step 3 brings about an “automatic crash phase” with no reason, as step 3 in itself can be considered a crash phase. Lastly, note the recovery phase between step 5 and step 1. You could consider the only successful part in the chart as failure. It still needs a lot of work but the first stages of The Crash Phase are well underway.

Icy Green Tea

I guess I should say “Chilled Green Tea”, really. I was in the kitchen early this evening and I thought I’d use a few of my green tea pouches to make a jug of iced tea. I drink it all the time at work but I had never really thought about making my own. I plugged in my electric kettle and I patiently waited for it to whistle. While I was waiting I placed two satchels of green tea into a large jar and sang a little bit of music to pass the time. When the kettle started to whistle I unplugged it and filled the jar up with boiling water. I was originally going to use a large container, but I thought the lid on the jar might be nice since I was going to be leaving it to cool on the counter for a few hours. Once the jar was full I let the tea bags swim for about 5 minutes until I had a nice golden brown liquid brewing. I took the tea bags out and plopped them into the trash can. It was then I decided I would add my ingredients. After all, it’s really not enough to just have cold green tea, is it?

I added two tablespoons of regular white sugar, and a large squeeze of honey from the bottle in the cupboard. I gave it a large stir and then put the jar’s lid back on, but not tightly. I wanted to let the steam vent a bit because it was really hot. After doing this I went to the freezer and took out an ice tray. It still had one or two cubes left in it, but I decided that wasn’t enough to ice my tea once it had cooled. I ate the two ice cubes (I love doing that) and filled the tray up with water before sticking it back in the freezer. A few hours later and…presto! Water to ice. By this time too my tea had cooled considerably, but was still quite warm. I popped the cubes out of the tray and put them into a large juice container on the counter. Then I had a brilliant idea! I grabbed a coffee filter from the cupboard beside the microwave and took the removable filter holding decide out of my coffee maker and held it over the juice container. I filtered out all of the little impurities you might find after brewing a cup of tea (those stray bits you find in the bottom of your mug). This worked quite well, and the tea actually looked really smooth and tasty after as well (although it was probably just in my head). I put the juice container that was half full of tea into the refrigerator for an hour and went to watch some T.V..

When I returned it was quite cold, so I was ready to take a drink to see what all of my hard work had done. It was…pretty bland. Nothing new or interesting. I thought to myself “There’s get to be something more I can do to give it flavour!” So, I went for a dig into the refrigerator and what do I find? A bottle of lime juice. I had seen citrus flavoured green tea before. I figured that things couldn’t go too wrong if I added a squirt or six into the mix. Sure enough this was what it needed.

I now have half a jug of chilled green tea in my fridge that is quite tasty, and almost certainly never worth the work to make again. XD

Move over Harry, the Muggles have this one!

Alright, here’s the deal: It’s 2 AM. I’m tired. I’m actually feeling quite…suggestible. I’ll keep this appropriate in any case. After having a nice long conversation with our friend Nir I have made a startling discovery about the world of magic and all that thrives upon it!

Mull this over, if you please: Harry Potter and the world of magic is all fun and games. In fact, it’s quite fun to think about what it would be like if we were wizards instead of non-magic folk. I used to do it all the time! Recently, not so much. Now and again though I’ll have some thoughts on why wizards fail and muggles (that’s you and I) succeed in every possible way. If wizarding folk were all that great then they’d be able to do once simple thing. My friends, I ask you…If wizards can kill people by muttering a simple curse, then why can’t they figure out how to fix Harry’s poor vision? Why must he suffer the disability of poor sight? Heck, muggles can do it via laser eye surgery and that doesn’t involve magic at all! Well…laser’s are quite magically but that’s beside the point.

GOOD LORD!

*shakes fist*

That’s right! I’m shaking my fist because I am quite angry. Just recently I had started my new blog, which is hosted on my own personal account. For some odd reason all of my e-mails, personal account information and even things I had viewed on the internet were turning up in my blog (and in turn, here on the Planet). Passwords I had sent to people for their e-mail accounts, photographs and even things from my clipboard were ending up in my blog even though I hadn’t posted them. Immediately I thought “Crap, I’ve got an enemy who knows my password.” Immediately after I thought this was quite impossible. My passwords are outlandishly long and always random. While I was on MSN last I was talking to Ben and I kindly asked him to remove my blog from the Planet. It wasn’t worth getting in trouble over and it wasn’t worth having my personal information posted publicly for all to see…