Yes, a couple days ago I discovered that I am truly a coke addict. Before you call the authorities, by coke I mean Coca-Cola. I mean, I always knew that I was addicted because I would suffer massive headaches if I didn’t have one by lunch time–apparently that’s what happens when you have been drinking soda with almost every meal or even without meals from the time you’re old enough to consume anything beyond baby food, working your way up to at least 5 cans a day by the time you’re 13–but I was recently shown just how severe it’s gotten…

I tried quitting lots of times *feels like a cheesy commercial for some new nicotine patch* and there were many times I would go months without drinking any soda, but I would always find my way back to that beautiful carbonated delight. For the past few years I would have no more than 2-3 a day, and would often try to limit myself to 1, and for a couple months I even limited it to only on the weekends and for the past two months I capped my max at 2.

Then, last Thursday, my niece (same age as me, older actually) and I decided to cold turkey soda. Aspirin let me slip by what would have been the most brain-splitting headache, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the only evil awaiting me.

For the entire week following, I was so tired all the time, and oddly sad, that I was really worried there was something wrong with me. On Friday, when the soda ban was lifted, I had half a can of soda that night finished it off the following morning. I had another for lunch, which was when the OBVIOUS connection finally hit me: There WAS something wrong with me–the absence of my usual caffeine intake. My withdrawal never had those symptoms before, at least not that I noticed, which is why it never occurred to me.

I had another half a can with dinner (some unbelievably yummy carne asada mmmm), and when I finished that one off later that night, I decided to do something I hadn’t done since my Red-Bull-before-school days: spaz. Spazzing for me cannot be instigated by caffeine alone, it requires flipping a “switch” in my mind. Spazzing takes me to world that’s just like yours, except it is so hysterically amusing for no reason at all that if you were around me when I started laughing like a maniac with no apparent cause, you would RUN. I went to hang out with some friends and we ended up going to eat at Ruby’s, and there I sat twitching and jerking, and randomly letting out spurts of laughter, and smiling so much I’m surprised my face didn’t stat hurting. I was a lunatic. And then something came to my mind…

When I was younger, like from 7 years, I used to spaz a LOT, but it came naturally with no “switch” involved. My ability to spaz was born on one very specific day caused by one very specific event–a story for another time, unless you’re absolutely intrigued and insist on me telling. Then, when I was about 13 or 14, something odd happened…in addition to my built up tolerance, life was a little less pleasant for me, so my spazzing began to lessen in ease, intensity, frequency, and even its ability to instill fear in others. Believe me, I still made people want to run sometimes…just not as far.

During summer school following 11th grade, I was incredibly bored because I was a “Teacher’s Assistant” in the office for both periods and they had nothing for me to do except shred papers, which only lasted about 20 minutes each day before it would overheat and stop working. And then I heard of Red Bull. Red Bull allegedly gave you wings, but I knew it wouldn’t for me because it was just high amounts of caffeine. By then my tolerance was so high that it seemed like the effects reversed and it took LACK of caffeine to be hyper. However, something about energy in a can intrigued me, and that’s when I developed the “switch”. As I took my first sip of that awful tasting chemical, I gave a little twitch. I took another, and gave a little jerk. As I chugged the rest of the can, I convinced myself, “This is going to make me SPAZ.” And simply because I wanted so desperately to spaz through my dull 4 hours of nothingness, it did. As soon as I finished it, my eyes popped open and I was ready to bounce of the walls. And believe me, I did., and I continued my deliberate spazzings for about half a year, until life’s events got in the way again and they stopped completely.

Saturday night at Ruby’s was the first time I had been able to spaz in 3 years. I had almost forgotten all about it and how happy it makes me. I miss it. And I hope to do it much, much more. I will be trying to work my way back down to one coke a day though, for my own health, but may the spazzing live ever on…

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And now for the site updates wooo!!!!!! First off I have a new affiliate, Sienna from This Parade…

Second, and ironically for being “2nd”, I added 222 images to my Photography pages, including a new one for Textures which you are allowed to use as long as you credit me, same with Light Effects. I finally battled my OCD and made each category a different “post” so that you can comment on individual ones in addition to the whole thing, and this way it won’t take so long to load since you’re looking at fewer at a time. If you’ve been visiting this site for a while, you might notice that most of them are a bit familiar, and that’s because I had them before but I somehow accidentally deleted them all when I tried to take them down for heavy construction on them. Majority of them were taken with my Blackberry Pearl, and either needed Photoshopping for general quality purposes, or like with the Light Effects I like to do really cool stuff with the colors, and originally when I was halfway through working on all of them, they disappeared off my hard drive o.O I was so annoyed I never really felt like doing them all over again, but I finally battled my laziness to and conquered them, as well as new ones I’ve taken in the past few months with a real camera.

Oh my gosh I swear I just caught a whiff of chocolate pudding. I want chocolate pudding now :O

Oh yeah, updates…I also started using a different script to load most of my portfolio images from my Coppermine gallery, not only because it makes all the thumbnails the same size which is really pretty and suits my OCD, but for nerdy coding reasons as well. You’ll find the prettiness on all the photography pages, the colorizations, the vectors, and the manipulations. I haven’t used it on my graphics because at the current time, I prefer being able to show the file dimensions and size below each, but if I can ever tweak the new script to let me continue to do that, I apply the same changes to that whole section as I did to Photography. And for Artwork, I like using the gigantic thumbnails so that’s staying how it is ;)

Another big change is my Free Hosting information. You need to read all the way through it because seriously, I changed a lot, but the most crucial thing is that you must already have a site created that I can view before you can apply, and freewebs.com is the best place to get that accomplished since there’s a good amount of space and bandwidth offered, and no ads or popups to annoy the heck out of me.

Works in progress are adding a few of my layouts to my Web Design page, and creating a new Harry Potter MySpace layout. No results for those pending blend challenges yet, so continue to with me luck.

Hasta la pasta!