I know, 2 posts in one day--lame. But here goes.

I am going to be overhauling my blog. Since I'm not going to be an academic for a long time (well, if I teach, am I an academic again?) so I was wondering what people have in terms of suggestions for blog designs and etc.

Hell, I might even retire this one and start up a new one since I am entering a new phase in my life. But...I finally got used to this blog as my personal blog.

Oh. And Noah will be making a website for me (a gift he owes me) as a personal website to start whoring--erk I mean, promoting myself out as a writer. What does one do to do this?

I have a few websites of writers I dig, like: www.neilaitken.com and www.chinginchen.com, but I'm wondering. If you are checking out someone's site, what are things you want to and don't want to see?

I'm afraid to fly

Tomorrow night, I fly to Virginia for my fellowship. I'm scared because I'll be flying by myself to a situation where I will be by myself.

I don't travel well. You see, I dislike packing because it causes a disruption. It causes me to break up everything I have for a moment and I have to piece myself back again into my life.

That, and I really don't like to fly. Updates to come.

All in a day's work

Like I've mentioned earlier, I'm teaching at UCR for my last time (I don't know if I ever want to work at UCR, but this will be a welcome final paycheck). Today, one of my students came rushing into the LGBT Resource Center trying to find the professor, because she lost her syllabus and couldn't find where his office is located.

She found me there, luckily because normally, I wouldn't be on campus until 15 minutes before class starts. She recognized me as the TA and freaked out. You see, she had been dropped from all her courses. She needs the professor's signature to get re-enrolled back into the course and can't find him. So I pack up all my things and I calm her down and we head to John's office.

We walk across campus in the heat. He's not in his office. She starts freaking out. I tell her to calm down and that I can talk to the offices and tell them that as her TA, I can vouch for her work as a student and that she has been attending. She gets happy and we realize that it's 20 minutes to 4, the time the offices close.

We book it across campus. Again. And we run up the stairs to the third floor and she's freaking out because she thinks we won't make it. But as soon as we get to the office, she enters a zen moment. She ends up being very calm. I end up being ragged and sweaty.

We walk in, and she explains that she couldn't find the professor but found the TA. I am able to sign off on the form for her, but I had to show 2 forms of ID, show that I have the key to the classroom and that I am a grad student because I am ragged, sweaty and about to collapse.

I get the student back into the class and she is estatic. I slump into the chair and sigh. I look down. She was running around campus. IN HEELS and didn't even break a sweat, where as I am drowning in it. I make my way to the classroom, set up the room for the 4:15 class and sit at the TA desk.

She comes in afterwards all smiles.

And the professor shows up to class late.

At least I was there for my students, right when she needed someone most.

The Value of Two Words (and other things)

There are two words that hold so much value to my life. "Thank You."
When someone says thank you, it means something. It's an acknowledgment of the self and the person and their actions. Telling someone "Thank you" is not only good manners, but it can help brighten someone's day--and people remember those who made them feel good as well as those who make them feel like crap.

I try to thank people for everything. Servers always get a thank you for me when the refill my water. People who hold the door for me get a thank you (except for the one time when I was chewing and the guy bitched me out for not saying thank you. I mean, come on. Do you want me to muffle a thank you through my tuna sandwich that I was still chewing? Ergh). And occasionally, when I'm with my friends, I'll lean on them and say, "Thanks." And most of them know why I'm saying thanks.

I mention this because I just bought about a bunch of thank you cards and I have to fill them out tonight. About 23 cards. 23 people. Within the last few years at UC Riverside, I've had a lot of people help me out. So I'm writing personalized cards for them thanking them and telling them how much I appreciate their guidance.

Thing is, some people will see this as sucking up, but I feel that doing this is polite and kind. And appreciated. Professor Straight told me that editors remember this sort of thing. So I should make a habit of it.

Sidenote: Redactions will be publishing my poem "The Price of Sweetness" in their winter issue. Yay!

And hey, thanks for reading this.

So. If you would like. I am giving you all a gift. Email me (you can click the email link on my blogger profile) with your address. I shall pick out a literary magazine I have, or a book I feel that you would enjoy and send it to you. We both win. You get some fun reading material...and I get to downsize my library.

Interested?

Worst Nightmare. Seriously. Worst dream ever.

It's 5AM here on the West Coast and I was jolted out of sleep by a very vivid dream where I was shot during my graduation for my masters degree (which happened 2 weeks ago) and I bled to death and died.

What makes the dream more surreal and frightening is that my twin sister was there. My sister died at childbirth. The person who killed me is someone who I had a falling out with 7 years ago and never spoke to since then. I just remember the sensation of leaving my body and seeing blood pool from my mouth as I woke up with my heart pounding, in a cold sweat, and about to break out in tears.

I don't usually remember nightmares. I usually remember them as being bad dreams that gave me a rough night of sleep. Or I'll remember certain aspects, but I remember everything right now. The smell of the gunpowder. The feel of the concrete as my body hit the ground near the belltower, even the taste of blood in my mouth as I started to die.

I don't know anything about the mind and the subconscious. I have a dream dictionary, but these things are so subjective, it's trying to find meaning in the unknown. But what happens in the mind is unknown. The electrical charges dancing between one synapse to the other--that's a bug unknown to me. It can be explained, but I want to know how and why does it all work.

I'm pretty shaken up right now. I don't know how I feel having this dream. This dream where everything seemed so real and so correct at the same time. My sister's name would have been Michelle. She was wearing a white sundress with red roses in my dream. She was smiling. She looked really happy for me. When I was dying, she, my parents, my older sister Joanne and her babies Emily and Anthony were around me. My friends Noah, Jeff, Zach, Melissa, Brianna, Megan and Rodrigo around me. There were hands trying to save me. I remember feeling hands trying to tear my robe off. I remember seeing an EMS crew reaching me before I lifted up.

I still remember the vacant look in my eyes and the blood, the deepness of the color, just trickling out of my mouth.

I was shot in the stomach. In the dream, it was after the ceremony ended and I was looking for my family and my friends. I was on my phone. I turned around and the gunman, who I will not name because I will not give him that power now that I am awake, was facing me with a gun. I slammed into him. Jerked his arm behind him and ordered him to drop the gun. He dropped a gun. But not the gun in his hand, which he turned upwards and shot into my stomach.

I saw things in my dream that were right at my graduation, the graduation that happened 2 weeks ago, that make me wonder about alternate memories because feeling this, living through this, felt so real. I wonder if on some other reality, if this could have really happened to me.

I honestly wish I smoked weed or drank excessively right now because I feel like I need to get out of my head for a little while.