Monday, December 21, 2009

News, Good and Random

French the llama, is it only 4 (almost only 3) days until Christmas!!!??!!!??!?!?!

(For an explanation about the "french the llama" thing, visit this video. It's nothing bad, I promise.)

Okay, so, some good news.

Darling Dearest is doing great. She's gained significant movement back in her left side since last I saw her. She has a slight case of "word salad", which, in case you don't know, means that sometimes she gets the words she means confused with a different word. However, it's much better than it was when she first woke up.

On the down side, she's very, very angry, but that's also understandable. She hates relying on other people, so I totally expected her to be pissed off at the nurses and such when she can't do what she wants.

They're going to start physical therapy with her soon, and she'll probably really like that. She's been trying to crawl out of the bed for a while anyway.

I'm doing good, myself. I've upgraded from crutches to a walker, and hopefully I'll be upgraded to a cane before I head back to college. It'll be hard to get to room on the second floor with a walker.

My Christmas shopping is done, I believe. I just got the last thing today. It's a great present for my mom.

Also, I've been very interested at cryptograms. They're very interesting and fun...but I'm rubbish at them. So...hopefully I'll improve. Also, I'm trying my hand at crossword puzzles. I'm rubbish at those too.

I've found myself not writing like I should be. I'll want to, I'll get on the computer...and then start surfing the net instead. I've been trying to make myself. Gotta get that discipline ready for next year.

I participated in an amazingly awesome project a few days ago. John Green, YA author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, is also known for his video-blog project The Vlogbrothers, which he does with his environmentalist/musician brother Hank Green. They're both very funny, and both promote ideals that I hold very dear myself, including green technology, reducing your carbon footprint, and promoting to charities.

Every year the brothers Green head up a project -- which they have dubbed the Project for Awesome. It's a great project where all of their viewers (dubbed "nerdfighters") get together to take over YouTube. You make a video promoting a charity that you really like. Then everyone spams the crap out of the comment sections, rates the videos, and favorites them, so that most popular, most discussed, and most viewed pages are all Project for Awesome videos. This is meant to raise awareness about charities to the average YouTube viewer, instead of them watching videos about water-skiing squirrels.

I participated in it--a 48 hour event--and I am proud to say that not only were all but two of the videos on the most discussed page Project for Awesome videos, but on Twitter, Project for Awesome trended above everything, including the movie Avatar, which made it's debut during the project for Awesome. John Green's goal was to trump Avatar, because it cost $250,000,000 to make, and, as John said, the Project for Awesome is free.

Anyway, so that's what I did with my weekend. It was fantastic. I was very proud to do it. John also auctioned off a pair of what he called his "nerd glasses"--the proceeds went to charity. In addition he's donating $1000 to his favorite charity from the list.

On a tiny sidenote, should you want to help with a charity, but have no money to do so, go to freerice.com. There's a vocab quiz there, and for every question you get right, they donate rice to starving nations. Totally free, and totally helpful in "decreasing world-suck," as the Brothers Green put it.

Anyway, that's all I've got for right now. Tomorrow my brother will be putting up Christmas lights and our tree. I'll be there for moral support mostly. And then we're going to see Darling Dearest before coming back for Christmas Eve with mi familia. Then it's back up to the hospital the next day to spend Christmas with Darling Dearest--because we will have our first Christmas together, dammit!

I hope you and yours are having a very Merry Christmas, a very happy Hanuka, a very happy Kwanza, or whatever it is you celebrate. As long as you're a live and you've got people to celebrate with, then you've got the world.

Happy Holidays all and Best Wishes!

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