BANG!

On the way home from a concert last week, I saw something hanging from a power line in front of the apartment building across from my house. It was a strand of something, glittering as it blew in the wind. I could also hear an electrical buzzing. I showed it to my mother, and she suggested it may have been the magnetic tape from a VHS. There was an intermittent blue-white spark where it touched the power line, accompanied by the buzzing noises (similar to the sound a bug zapper makes).

We weren't entirely sure what to do about it. Do you call the police? Or the Electricians Guild? About five or ten minutes after we went inside, there was a cacophonous BUZZ, the outside flashed blue-white, and we were plunged into darkness. It was quite startling. The entire street was pitch black.

The power came back a couple minutes later.

Chamber Music

The first concert I ever went to was at the Music Room (the K-W Chamber Music Society) in October of 2008. I had recently taken an interest in classical music, and my friend, Lois, treated me to a series of concerts. The Aviv String Quartet was performing all 15 of Shostakovich's String Quartets. I had never seen (or heard-Shostakovich is pretty insane/dark) anything like it before. It was fascinating to watch them play their instruments, especially the cello, fingers dancing frantically over the strings.

Concerts at the Music Room are held in the living room on the upper floor of the organizers' own house. It is a lovely atmosphere. It seats about 85 people, positioned around the floor space accorded to the musicians. The audience is just feet away from the performers -the way chamber music is meant to be played. The room is high-ceilinged, with wood beams, a fireplace faced with cobblestone, and various interesting artworks.

After the last concert of the Shostakovich cycle, a party was held at the house of my friend Leslie's boyfriend (she usually helps set things up). This was also coincidentally my first real party. I was able to meet the musicians -all very nice people, especially the cellist, Rachel Mercer.

I have been back for many concerts since then. They manage to hold some world-class performers. Till Fellner, an amazing pianist from Austria, came a number of times to play all of Beethoven's sonatas. I made sure to be there when he played Sonata No.23 'Appassionata', my favourite piece of classical music (thanks to Anne Rice, who inspired me to listen to it due to the large part it played in 'The Vampire Armand'). It is such a tempestuous work, and hearing it live was exhilarating; my heart was pounding.

I also try to go any time Rachel Mercer is there. In 2009 she won the privilege from the Canada Council to play the 1696 'Bonjour' Stradivarius cello for 3 years (it is insured for nearly $8 million). I saw her play in early 2010, and she let me touch it!

See Sarah McLachlan Live: Check!

Another goal fulfilled. I had been waiting for years for her to come back to Kitchener, ever since I discovered her music 14 years ago. She is my absolute favourite singer. She has such a powerful voice, and tends toward the dark. Like myself, the most depressing music makes her the happiest.

The concert was great. She brought some fellow singer/songwriters to perform with her: Melissa McClelland and her husband, Luke Doucet. They each played a few of their own songs. Sarah played a number of her newer songs as well as the greats. I did not care what else was played, as long as she did 'Possession'. I have the live version on iTunes and wanted to see her do it. It was incredible; she really held that last note forever. I am so glad I was able to see her perform.

Psidaprazam

Possible side effects may include:
dry mouth, fatigue, nausea, heart palpitations, rash, hives, blisters, welts, hair loss, blindness, difficulty breathing, liver failure, aphasia, mania, depression, shivers, hysteria, phobias, uncontrollable laughter, facial ticks, restlessness, paralysis, racing thoughts, paranoia, low blood pressure, anemia, an abnormal amount of somersaulting, voracious apatite, decreased apatite, hallucinations, migraines, obsessions, compulsions, spontaneous dance, monotonous voice, atheism, pantheism, excessive complimenting, lip syncing, foreign accent syndrome, aggressiveness, agreeableness, lack of depth perception, development of alternate personalities, bleeding, kleptomania, death, memory loss, abuse of metaphors, and torture.

I went out to buy a new laptop today. On the way to the bus stop, I could hear bagpipes being played. At Future Shop, I met a very talkative 11th grader who wanted to go into politics. He plans to be Prime Minister, and do a much better job than Harperor Palpatine. On the bus ride home, the ceiling lights leaked a pale blue liquid on me. There was also a girl who fit the stereotypical description of a prostitute: overdone makeup, fishnets, etc. Upon exiting the bus, a man swerved on his bike to avoid running into me. In a cascade of mishaps, he crashed over onto his side, and upon righting himself, dropped his bag of beer cans, which exploded, spraying beer all over the sidewalk.

Help

I have been encouraged by my therapist to ask these questions, despite the fear of alienating people.

Friendships have always been a source of pain and frustration for me. I have lost many friends, the reasons for which are unknown to me; they just kinda went away. I would (I thought) be a good friend, initiating conversations, plans. It seemed I always ended up doing all the 'work' in the friendship, however. Eventually I would hear less and less from them...I've learned to give up trying to keep a friendship going after a certain amount of time. Friendships need participation from both sides, right?

More and more I wonder if I am the problem. Is it that I keep choosing the wrong kinds of people? In that case, why? Is it that I'm too negative? I think that I am more positive when in the company of friends. Perhaps it is due to my AS. Not always responding appropriately (physically), missing various social cues "neurotypicals" take for granted, could be off-putting? I truly do not know.

I am not trying to complain. I just would like to know what I am doing wrong (if anything) so I can begin to work on it.

The Persistence of My Memory

My memory has always been a source of pride. I've always been able to recall vast amounts of (mostly useless) information. It stretches far into the past, and encompasses all the senses. I can remember things like everyone I've ever had a crush on, conversations I had years ago, where/how I learned a particular word, and many scenes from my early childhood. My earliest memory is of having my picture taken by a professional photographer. I was 2 and a half months old.

One of the things which makes me most proud is from when I was in YAP. For my psychological evaluation, one section required me to briefly study a key of symbols, each assigned a number. I then had to write the corresponding number under each symbol, doing this for as many symbols on the page within a time limit. Kathy Lawrence, who administered the evaluation, said she'd never seen anyone complete that much of the sheet.

My memory has been failing me lately, however. I've been forgetting things. I asked a friend if he had moved into a new apartment yet, completely forgetting that he had already told me he did a month or two before, even showed my where it was on a map. I had been going through my Magic: The Gathering cards, and realized that I was missing a large number. I no longer had a few of the cards I used to great success against my opponents. The more I looked into this, the more I noticed what was missing. I used to have an entire artifact-themed deck, most of which is just...gone. I'm sure it's possible that I tried to sell a number of cards, after I had to stop playing because I became obsessed with it. I should remember having done this, though.

This is very troubling for me. It scares me, losing my greatest asset.

The other night, Mom told me that we had once been in one of those old-fashioned elevators with the grates you close before ascending/descending. I should remember something like this. Her mention of it didn't even trigger the memory that should be there; I'm taking her word for it.

Meleagris gallopavo!

Last week I tracked a large dinosaur. I went out for a walk and found her on the sidewalk a few houses down the row. I followed her around for a bit, taking pictures, before she flew off across the street into a wooded area. I now know wild turkeys can fly. I tried to find her, searching through the trees, to no avail.

I decided to go to the park then, where I found her tracks, as well as at least one other bird's. The tracks went back and forth all over a large part of the park. It seems a dog had been chasing them through the baseball diamond as well.

I wonder what they were doing in the city?

Entire Passenger Load of Bus Found Asphyxiated

I was able to cross off a few things from my bucket list this past week. Mom and I went to the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival for the first time. We'd both always wanted to go for the toffee made by pouring the syrup into snow. The toffee wasn't bad (painfully sweet, though), but it took over an hour of waiting to get it. Their toffee delivery system was unorganized. There was no line up; everyone just crowded around the small pen, and toffee was handed out randomly, making it so that someone who showed up 30 minutes after you could even get theirs before you did. It wasn't worth the wait, in my opinion.

I also tried deep-fried Mars Bar for the first time: SO good-better than regular Mars Bar. There was an antiques show, in which I was close to checking off a third item from my list. Someday, I want to own a fire grenade (filled with carbon tetrachloride), and there were two of them at one of the tables. I had never beheld one in person before. They're quite heavy, despite the glass being not much thicker than a light bulb's. One was gorgeous, with a lovely metal bracket for mounting it on the wall. I had forgotten how dangerous they could be until he mentioned it (they work by sucking all the oxygen out of the area once smashed); I put it down after that. I didn't get it because I didn't have a secure way of transporting it home, and Mom would have been uncomfortable having it in the house. As it turned out, the bus ride back to Waterloo was packed; I had to stand the entire way back. I'm quite proud of my mother, however. She imagined me bringing the grenade aboard and dropping it, killing everyone inside; it made her laugh. I can just imagine the authorities finding the bus full of dead passengers, thinking it's some sort of bio-terrorist attack. She's becoming more like me as time passes; this is not a good thing for her.

Before leaving the town, I bought a bottle of maple syrup (so much better than normal syrup), as well as a block of lovely extra old white cheddar for only $2.00!

Dinosaur Sculptor

The lecture at this month's gem club meeting was incredible. Mark Rehkopf, an artist from St Jacobs, talked about his career making dinosaur sculptures. He started off working on a T. rex for a Discovery Channel special. He has built sculptures for museums all over North America, and done fossil reconstructions as well. He did the Diplodocus outside of Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the mastodons outside Indiana State Museum, and various dinosaurs in Chinese museums. He's worked on the blue whale hanging in the American Museum of Natural History. He even did the Chasmosaurs and Daspletosaurs (not T. rexes, it turns out) at the Nature Museum in Ottawa. He showed us his hidden signatures, such as in the hair folds of a mastodon and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. He talked of building an animatronic Triceratops for Universal Studios Park, and the Jurassic Park: Lost World travelling exhibit.

At the end of the talk, he pulled out a couple pieces actually used in the film: a raptor claw, and a chunk of skin from the T. rex's neck. I actually got to touch a piece of Jurassic Park. I became very sad afterwards, and couldn't stop crying once I left. I know it had something to do with touching a part of my favourite film, but I have no idea why this would make me so sad.

Neighbours

My neighbours are an interesting bunch. There's the grandmother, who caused a bit of a ruckuss a few months back. We kept hearing a squawking from next door. Mom thought maybe they had a parrot; I thought it was someone possessed by demons. The noise continued for a couple of weeks, and eventually we were able to hear unintelligible muttering mixed with the squawks, confirming my suspicions. She was taken away to the hospitable one night, squawking at the paramedics. She no longer squawked after she returned home. Word through the grapevine is that she has passed away recently.

The children, who must be in their late teens, early 20's, get into violent arguments, threatening to kill one another. I've often seen cars pull up late at night, the son (or father) going out to them briefly. The parents are often heard late into the night, drunkenly partying (our walls are paper-thin).

One night, as I was trying to sleep, another fight broke out. There was screaming and crying, and shortly after, the daughter and a friend went outside. The girl was sobbing/angrily slurring (my window has gaps in the seams which allow noise in even more than the walls) about how she hated her father. Her friend was telling her that she shouldn't put up with this anymore, "hitting her so hard she bled, cleaning up the blood, before hitting her again." Every once in a while, the son would step out to yell at her, she telling him off each time. She drunkenly spewed about how her father "works during the day to make money to do cocaine the rest of the time,'' that he was the one who got her "hooked on heroin." At one point, the father stepped out, yelling at her to come back inside. She refused, saying she was going to "go die in the snow," that her death would be "on his hands." She wandered off, though she seemed to only be walking in circles around the block.

The police arrived shortly after, though all they did was ask a couple questions and leave, seemingly satisfied.