So far as I know, Winter-een-mas isn't over yet, and I have many more games to play. Not sure I'll get to them all, I've got a couple things to do Saturday and then Sunday I visit my family. That list will grow, but I may not get to them all. It's kind of funny, because I made that project for myself before the most recent comic went up, about the old games fulfilling their purpose. I have a lot of old games that I will probably honour this holiday season >:P

But in completely unrelated news, I can't sleep, as seems to be the norm as of late, and for some reason my mind is spinning with the nutritional trivia I learned in highschool when I took the highly-sought-after foods classes. The grade ten version was basically what most schools do for their girly housekeeping unit thing (Whatever it's called, the name is escaping me right now), which gave us a slew of recipes and had us cook a variety of meals, aswell as clean up and practice good kitchen etiquette. The grade 12 version of the course, however, dealt with things a highly trained nutritionist would know, and even had us looking at the atomic structures of carbohydrates, lipids, and amino acids. For me it was just a social studies credit I needed, and I escaped with barely a pass, but I did have to study the material in order to get even that much, because the teacher was very tough when it came to marking.

Some random food trivia, then.

Water: One thing a lot of women neglect to do is drink water. It's true, we read an article on it. There are a lot of women who fail to feel hungry because they don't drink enough water through the day, so they eat when they think they should feel hungry. I know, I used to be like this, but I've been trying XD The thing about water is it's used in a variety of enzymes and chemical reactions in your body, including the biochemical carrier signals that go to your brain. If you don't have enough water in your body for these reactions, the message from your stomach to your brain calling for food doesn't get sent. That can lead to various weight problems on either end of the scale. Not having enough water can also lead to headaches because it's used in the chemicals your brain floats in, and you can even feel tired and weak because of a lack of water intake. Now, the reccomended daily intake for pure H2O is something like a gallon - personally, I don't feel like working my way through a full gallon of water during the day. That'd be optimal, but carrying a water bottle around isn't a habit I've developed yet. However, two glasses of water a day is enough. Try to drink a glass in the morning with breakfast, and then later at night with dinner, your body will thank you for it. A good indication of whether you're getting enough water? If your pee is yellow, you're not getting enough XD For realz.

Breakfast: The main thing you want to concern yourself with, when it comes to any meal, is breakfast. This is the most important meal in the whole day, and it cannot be put off until lunch, or you'll feel tired all day, much like I did for the entirety of highschool XD The main focus for breakfast is protein. Now, breakfast should be your largest meal of the day (As opposed to dinner, but I'll get to that), but that being said, you don't actually need that much protein to get you started. A glass of milk or a slice of bread will be enough, the important thing here is to get in the habit of grabbing something (That isn't a doughnut or coffee XD Try to avoid sugars especially, they may wake you up for a minute but it won't last until lunch) to have for breakfast. A lot of people go to the elaborate lengths of making eggs and bacon with buttered toast and garnished with a sprig of parseley with orange juice on the side or something, but you don't actually need all that. It's awesome if you do! But if you're just getting into the habit of breakfast, and you're pressed for time in the morning, grab a slice of bread and munch on it on the way. You'll notice the difference it makes, and again, your body will thank you for it.

Lunch: This is the time to get stocked up on your fruits & veggies group. If you're packing a lunch for work, get in the habit of making a sandwich, complemented with several containers of cut fruits or veggies as you please. Carrots are good raw, or boiled, or caramelized in a frying pan with brown sugar the night before. Make some cookies and take them with you to work. Something a friend of mine would do at a place I used to work, was she would bring her lunch in six different containers: A sandwich bag for her bread, some of that boxed microwaveable bacon, a container for sliced tomatoes, one for lettuce, and then some yogurt on the side. Then she'd put the BLT together and have the yogurt for dessert. Her reasoning was that if she put it together at home the tomatoes would make the bread soggy, which makes sense, but at least that way she didn't have to spend money on one made for her. It's also six servings, right there: two grain, two veggie, a dairy and a protein. Booyah. Anyways, lunch is the time to stock up on your fruit & veggie servings for the day, aswell as grain products. This should also be a large-sized meal.

Dinner: This should, in theory, be the smallest meal of the day, however a lot of people are guilty of making it the largest. I do too, I would never deny it, when you get in from work tired and hungry the first thing you want to do is fill up on a large, hot meal, right? However, if you load up on complex carbs and protein now, just hours before bed (And it shouldn't be right before bed, either), that's a fast track to weight gain. You're asleep, so where is it all going to go? Your body doesn't use much during sleep, that's the sort of thing you should eat at least an hour before a marathon. It all gets stored away, it doesn't even carry over to breakfast. So, this meal should be the smallest. Also, about dinners: A lot of people have a protein dish at this time. I know I loves me some chicken or steak, but it's not actually necessary here, either. Did you know that a lot of big carnivores, such as lions, tigers, wolves, etc, only hunt and kill two or three times a week? That's about as frequently as we need a big meaty meal, too, being omnivorous and all. And speaking of meat...

Vegitarians: If you're one of those vegitarians that believe that you're somehow saving the world by refusing to eat meat, therefore less chickens and cows will die, or if you honestly think that there's no value in the number of fields of grain equal to one cow equation, you are a colossal idiot. Sorry to put it bluntly, but it's true. Denying yourself the complex proteins that animals are made of is starving your brain and bodies of nutrients that it needs. Have you ever seen a vegitarian that's muscular or fit in any way? Hell, have you ever seen one that's fat who's been at it for a while? Neither have I, because they don't exist. You'll never build muscle on soy beans and tofu, and you'll probably put your brain through hell trying to make plant matter work in the place of fibrous animal meat. All of you out there that believes you're doing the right thing by denying the actual physical needs of your body, you're retarded. Now, don't get me wrong, some ideas these estranged non-humans have is okay by me, such as hemp clothing because it grows faster and uses less mineral resources than cotton, or changing your bulbs to those long-lasting halogen bulbs that use far less power that traditional argon-fillament bulbs. But as far as food is concerned, when the zombie apocalypse comes they're probably going to go for the herbivorous vegitarians first, because the rest of us normal omnivores will taste slightly gamey from our animal-eating tendencies.

If you read Ctrl+Alt+Del (http://www.cad-comic.com), you would know that it's Winter-een-mas time again. For my Winter-een-mas, since my social time is doomed to be reduced, instead of going to LAN parties or hitting an arcade with friends I'm going to sit in and sample every game I own over the course of the holiday. I will put the list below this post as I go through them.

• World of Warcraft (Of course)
• Halo (The first one XD)
• Thief: Deadly Shadows
• Dead or Alive 3
• Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
• Starcraft w/ Brood War expansion
• Fairy Godmother Tycoon
• more to come

I don't know why it's on my brain at this time of night when I'm trying to sleep, but I can't seem to sleep until I talk about it, so here it is. I'm going to be completely honest about my known psychological problems. I'm going to list them too, starting with the ones I can place down to the ones that just might be quirks and not really a big deal. Also? Anyone that says 'If you claim you're crazy, then you're not crazy' is full of shit. You can be crazy, and be aware of it, but still be crazy. I'm not saying it for the attention, I'm saying it because I'm letting the rest of the world know to watch out XD

• I'm legitimately paranoid, and have been ever since I was a young child. The specific thing that had me paranoid when I was little was pictures of faces. I'd think that, somehow, the person in the picture (Whether it was a real person or a character from fantasy) was watching me, so I would behave as if they were. I didn't hang posters in my room until I was older, even though I had them, because of this. I also believed that, if I was too smart when I was a child, that somebody would take me away for research and experimentation. No lie. I would fudge my answers on tests and had a C+ average most times on report cards. These days I know what to call it, but that doesn't stop me from scattering weapons all over the apartment, and reacting every time the house creaks. It's the worst when I'm alone. When my best friend was on vacation I had all the doors locked 100% of the time, and said "Goodbye hun!" and "I'm home!" into the house as I was coming & going, just in case anybody happened to be watching the apartment and thought I might be alone.
• I have an anti-suicide/murder pact with a very good friend. It's incredibly mentally damaged, I know this, but it works. It works like this: If I started cutting my wrists, he would then have permission to cut his wrists too, and I wouldn't want him to harm himself because of me, so I'm deterred from doing it in the first place. Likewise, if he killed someone, I would be allowed to kill someone, and suffer the consequences and obvious legal repercussions for the murder, and he wouldn't want that for me. Definitely not the most healthy way to keep each other in line, but it's maintained order for years and promises to stay that way for decades to come.
• I'm very obsessive-compulsive. I have little habits and traditions that I go through every day. I hate change, so it takes me a long time to establish these habits, but if I forget them it bothers me until I go complete it, example: using the bathroom and brushing my teeth every night before bed. Other things I do include: Washing my hands very frequently, drying my hands on the exact same spot on the towel every single time, rinsing my fingers while I'm cooking, laying out everything I'll need for cooking before I start, and if I clean anything I am very thorough and will go as far as moving the stove to sweep behind it. Sometimes I'll catch myself cleaning walls of fingerprints too, I used to do that at my old place a lot.
• I have issues with managing my anger. I don't like yelling, that was my mother's trademark and I don't like getting caught up in that. If I can avoid them, I don't like confrontations either, because I know that I'm terrible with words if I'm truly upset and it gets me nowhere. So, instead, I bottle it up until I find the first opportunity to hit something really hard without breaking it. I walk around for the next while looking to kill the first thing that moves, but I always direct it at something inanimate and hopefully durable enough to take a punch or two. If I can't get the momentary satisfaction of violence, it all comes out in the form of tears, which just makes me feel even worse because I do kind of take it as a weakness, at least solely on my part. So when I'm pissed, and I go to my room, it's not because I'm running away. It's because I need to hit something and I'm trying to avoid it being your face. Again, not a healthy way to deal with it, but I've yet to find another way that clears it up as well as violence against walls and furniture does XD I'm the quiet one >:)
• I was diagnosed as being chronic-depressive, or something, by a religiously biased psychologist once upon a time. I know I have issues with depression and how easily I can fall into it, but whether or not she was right on the money or just close to it remains to be seen. I don't take pills for it and would never do so for as long as I have the choice, spawning my whole positive-psychology schtick, but it continues to be a problem every now and again. These days it's not a 'omg I want to kill myself' sort of depression, because that's kinda stupid and redundant (See below), but it's more of a complete lack of motivation to do anything productive, or even fun. It's the kind of depression where, instead of watching Big Bang Theory and knitting, I'm sitting here looking at Lolcats and Failblog. Not a big difference, but it's there.
• I honestly do not fear my own death. I've thought about it, envisioned myself dying from illness or even violently like being hit my a subway train - it doesn't phase me at all. Granted, imagination only goes so far, and I know I would have enough human instinct left to try and avoid it, but still, it doesn't bother me. I'd miss the people I care about, and I don't have any issues with life itself or the events of mine thus far (I've had a crisis here and there, but otherwise I think I've made it through okay), but if I died tomorrow I don't think I would fight it. Meh. Maybe that's just another way that my life is pushing me towards being either a superhero or a martyr XD As above, suicide would be kinda pointless, because I feel that my life, as in, my flesh and blood shell I use to experience the world, has no value. Skin is just a stepping stone.
• Now, a lot of people think schizophrenia and they think multiple personality disorder - Not true. I've done my homework. Schizophrenia has less to do with honest-to-goodness multiple personalities and more auditory and visual hallucinations. Every now and again, it doesn't happen often, maybe about two or three times a year, I will hear a voice, usually female, in my mind. Often I hear her say my first name and then, startled by that, the rest of the message is lost by my surprise and distraction XD But on occaision I've heard her say "I love you," after a fight with my mom, or "Good night," just as I'm starting to fall asleep. I believe in spirits, so I look on this fairly positively, but take it as you will. Another way that I'm probably clinicly insane? That's fine with me too, I always try to look at things from different perspectives to allow for the possibility that I'm dead wrong.
• This one is a stretch, and kind of random, but I've had some profound dreams dealing with the 'devil', and once or twice 'god'. I don't really believe in the traditional monotheistic paradigm that most world religions today ascribe to, but here it is. Most of the time I'm talking to the devil, and he's usually a gentleman who just yearns to be understood. He has told me in dreams that he feels betrayed, and I can't help but sympathise. Especially when you look at the rare dream where god enters the picture, and he's all fire & brimstone on all who deny him. Well, since I'm naturally rebellious to any supposed authority over my prized free will, I deny him, and get sent to hell for it to chill with my man down below XD This could be caused by a number of things, and I'm sure the first one the devout will spit out is that he's manipulating me into trusting him yadda yadda, Eve and the apple and all that. Another is that my subconscious naturally favours the devil's character, because of the story, and again, I am naturally rebellious XD Tell me to go one way and I'll take the other 99% of the time. I could elaborate more on this, but I'm sure I've upset enough people with just this much (Ohh mah gawd! I had dreams about the devil! *thunder crashes* O.O!!!), but this one is last, because I generally don't think this is something that contributes to my crazy, I think it's more my worldview and the fact that my folks took me to a church every sunday for most of my childhood.

So there you have it. I'm fucking psycho XD Well, I know that I'm at least paranoid and obsessive-compulsive, but if that doesn't scare you off, the rest definitely should >:P

Drama. Hmmmmmmm.

I don't know how it happens, but it always manages to creep up on me, somehow. So instead of being bitchy about it, I'm gunna go with a positive spin on the current situation (And I should probably not be posting anything about it considering my best friend told me to stop listening to her phone conversations >.>;;, though really all I can make out is my first name being thrown around a lot, aswell as the name of a person I utterly despise). My best friend is awesome.

First, a word about best friends: In my case, I consider someone to be my best friend if I've known them for an exceedingly long time (Upwards of five years, usually), if I can trust them to stick up for me when people are attacking me behind my back (Or tell me when it's happening), and if I can trust them with my life. I am a generally paranoid and suspicious person, so that last one means a lot to me, even if it may seem contrived and kinda tacked on at the end XD A best friend for me is someone I would give blood or a kidney for, provided I was a match, and if I happened to die with lots of lucre to give away, anybody I consider a best friend will be treated to a generous sum XD

I find a best friend in someone who proves to me time and time again that I can trust them. They usually have to keep in touch with me frequently before I start to do the same with them, and even then I'm terrible for making social plans ^-^;; Best friends are the only friends I give gifts to on Christmas and for birthdays, and I go out of my way to make it something meaningful.

I don't usually have many best friends, the most I've had at one time I think was three. That's down to two now, thanks to, *gasp* Drama *boo hiss*, but these are generally the kind of people that I will hang on to for as long as I can.

My best friend is the kind of best friend that I would cross any distance for. If she needs anything, she can call or text me any time, and I'll do my best to help. I am a dispenser of random wisdom and advice, and I'm glad to be so for her. I'm the kind of friend where I will take the phone from her when she is upset, and try my best to smooth things over with whoever is on the other end. If there is some grossly unfair crisis situation in her life, I will put myself in the center of it and conquer any opposing sides. Speaking of sides, I don't like taking them in domestic arguements, and I don't always take hers if I'm forced to (Maybe half the time), but I will still try to bring some perspective and iron out the issue as a neutral third party.

Why am I blabbing about all this? Because a few minutes ago I overheard her on the phone defending me. All of this crazy, insane crap I do or would do for my best friends if they ever needed it, they'd do the same for me too.