Grrr!

I want people to stop trying to legislate other people’s relationships.

I want to have a choice to have whatever relationship I want - boyfriend, girlfriend, live-in lover, husband, platonic chum. I want everyone else to have the same choices.

I want the population of this country to recognize that JUST BECAUSE a noisy group of us believe that every marriage SHOULD be a man and a woman raising children, this is not in practice how it works. People sometimes don’t have kids, for one. Even when they do, men leave women and women leave men, resulting in single parents, who must rely on grandmothers, grandfathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and neighbors to have some part in raising the kids. The parents might have been married. They might not have been. Regardless, the kids need someone to come pick them up, kiss their boo-boo, teach them how to become responsible and rational adults - and the only way to do this is by relationships with the kid.

The only way to save marriage is to save the kids. The only way to save the kids is to foster positive and nurturing relationships with them. The only way to have relationships is to have the time and energy to be there emotionally with the kids, reading to them, talking to them, demonstrating the social skills and conflict management skills and problem solving skills they will need to have with them when they are married.

Do you think that single parents have this? Some of them do, some can’t manage it because they were once kids who had less than adequate parenting.

Adequate parents create adequate parents. Kids who did not have adequate parents either 1) work hard in adulthood to overcome their flawed life skills and develop new ones or 2) shrug off the need to change, have kids, treat them like little adults and expect them to “just do what they are supposed to do” then act like tantrum-y two year olds when the kids act like kids who did not have adequate parenting.

If you are thinking about voting down same sex marriage because you are misguided enough to believe that it will be a detriment to the sanctity of marriage - I want you to drop the anti-gay marriage crap, go home, and develop a relationship with your kids that will result in healthy, rational adults who will be much less likely to get a divorce because they will not run blindly into marriage without relationship skills. These adults will then be raising kids who will do the same. I want you to do your part in saving marriage from the real and present danger to marriage - the inability to manage a stable long term relationship. I want you to stop pretending to yourself that gay people having relationships has anything to do with it.

I want you to grow up and get rational. I want you to recognize there is not a soul among us without prejudice, and letting personal prejudice get mixed up in social justice is not a road you want to go down. Laws are laws. Your preferences are your preferences, not mine or Jim’s or Sally’s.

In fact, I want to see the legal contract between two people change so that it mirrors what actually happens. Let’s make the act of raising children a separate legal institution, that can be set up between two people who aren’t married. Let’s make the act of raising children something that you, me, Uncle Joe and Grandma can do together. Any one of us can sign for medical treatment, educational decisions, or take lil Abner home from school because we all share in the decision making and raising of the child. Because this is what happens. Because bio dad isn’t in the picture, stepdad is, and the kid calls the stepdad Dad - and he’s much more of a dad than the guy who used to smoke weed and let the tv babysit for him. If we’re going to say that the jerk who hasn’t seen the kid since birth has parental rights, and the guy who takes the kid to football practice, cooks him dinner, and buys him the cool birthday present every year “isn’t the father” - does this make sense? Stepdad can only adopt if jerk gives up his parental rights. Fair? To whom, the kid?

We have an idea of what marriage is, and what family is, but guess what? It’s not what really happens. And I want you to understand that what really happens matters more to the kids than what you think should happen. I want people to take parenting seriously and respect it for what it is - no less than the determination of the future of our society.

I want you to find that magic line between your beliefs and reality, walk up to it, and acknowledge that your assumed right to have the world conform to your expectations has NOTHING to do with the reality of thousands of kids in the US today. I would rather see a kid being raised lovingly by two women than by his deadbeat dad and drug addicted mom, or by a group home or foster parents.

I want the real danger to marriage to be addressed, because it will address so many other societal ills that we as a country would not be able to resist change for the better. I want to see people have real relationships with each other instead of hiding behind their personal “morality” and insisting that everyone around them conform to it.

I want a lot of things, and I’m smart enough to know that I can’t legislate them into reality. It has to happen one person at a time.

I want it to start with you.

I did not know one could be allergic to foot fungus.

The itching, the blisters - I’d rather have the peeling and itching on my toes, not my hands! AAAARRRRRRRRG!

I keep wringing my hands like a movie baddie. People are starting to wonder. I have all these little blisters just under the skin and benadryl doesn’t help. Doctor can’t see me for another week.

ARRRRRRGGGG!

I wish this helped.

So I’ve been so overwhelmed and crazy busy on the go, my roots have grown out an inch after a number of years of being a bottle blond. I find that I am more gray than not.

This feels strange to me.

I think I will continue to be blond for a few years yet.

Lots and lots of job stress. If people would only be consistent I wouldn’t have to keep closing cases and the billing wouldn’t be dropping too low.

At least the hiking group outings are going well. I’ve met all kinds of people. Neat people, who sound like they are relatively sane and fun to hike with.

On the other side, I have too many bills and added my second ever traffic ticket. Be careful out there, the patrolmen are looking to fund that next civic project, or just make up for the shortfalls in the budget, and you can’t let a tire drift over the double yellow line even if you’re about to make a left turn.

Going backpacking for two nights. Have a great Fourth of July weekend. Stay safe.

The upstairs neighbor is busy tonight, trundling his furniture to and fro, apparently with very large people still sitting in it. (I am going solely by the sound of it all, mind you - there might be skiing elephants, or rolling rhinos, or perhaps he is stripping the flooring with a hand axe.)

That’s okay, however, as I am listening to MASH episodes at full volume to cover the noise.

Viva la neighborness.

Yesterday, the word “layoff” was dropped into a staff meeting.

The guys who did my oil change wouldn’t rotate the tires - said I needed new ones. Went to Costco, where the guy said I needed two, not four. Bought two. Now I can’t pay my therapist.

Woke up tired, got allergies, went through the day a zombie, and it just went out of control from there.

Today had better give me sunshine and hypoallergenic daisies.

I must be Murphy’s girlfriend. I pay annual webhosting, their server goes down and mySQL stays down longer than the server, so visitors get a lovely ‘database unavailable’ for 24 hours.

Siiiiiigh. At least it’s Friday. I wonder if I have any beer left? I need one.

The adventure of the tick bite, post-ER trip.

Last night - pink, blotchy, warm to the touch, swollen area around the original bite.
This morning - angry red area, bigger, more blotchy stuff. Fever of 102F.
Around noon - you don’t want to know, probably.

The urgent care doc shot me full of some antibiotic and gave me a scrip for that stuff they use for Lyme disease, which is a tetracycline type horse pill.

Feeling somewhat flu-ish.

Thank Dog it’s Friday tomorrow.

and a happy #$%@ new year.

Sorry, I’m just cranky, because today and tomorrow are turning out to be the longest miserable days of the year. NO ONE wants to work two days before an eleven day vacation, and I certainly am not alone in not wanting to do anything this week as most of the kids are turning into caffeine driven squirrels for the holidays.

Add in a flat insulting letter I got and it’s JUST NOT HAPPY JAN.

I anticipate my mood will improve about Saturday when I get in the car and depart, leaving the pets to deal with the pet sitter and the office to deal with whatever, and spend a week where my allergies won’t kill me and there aren’t endless pieces of paper to submit and goals to reach and hyperactive squirrels, i.e. kids, to wrangle. But I won’t be here to blog about it. I will however take many pictures.

Why did I leave the final bit of my yuletide fic til now?

Why did I forget what brilliant thing I was going to end it with?

Why did I wait until now to turn all this yarn into one sided scarves for various persons I know?

Lo, behold, the lady of unanswerable imponderables. Yogis on mountains in Siberia are pondering these, and shall do so until the end of time.

The boxes, and the stuff, and the dust. And the cat, because mommy’s packing again god help us now I must run around like an idiot and knock things over and bash into walls.

When I collapse in front of the tv for a break she jumps on my stomach and wriggles and flumps and purrs and digs her toes in until she finds just the right position, which looks like every position she just tried, whatever…. and then I have to dislodge her to go pee because she just poked my bladder eighty times in a row. Rinse, repeat. Clingy idiot. I guess she thinks I’m going to leave her behind? Like I ever did that, however tempted I might be.

I am barely getting started and already I have visions of backing the Uhaul up to a cliff and shoving everything out. BLEAH. Anyone want a metric ton of books?

Much clipping and snipping, followed by four hours of rendering various bits of video, followed by…

“[application] terminated unexpectedly. Reopen?”

NAYYYYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHARRRRRRRGH.

So the vid I was working on will be delayed until next weekend.

I am somewhat proud of myself for clearing out that last pile of old papers and rearranging the office somewhat. Housecleaning can be so cathartic.

Today I was issued a new list of items that are overdue for my various files concerning various clients.

That would be well and dandy except for the fact that all those items were turned in weeks, or in some cases months, ago.

Something tells me I need a new new list - one that I make, and keep, and maintain, and back up with photocopies of the paperwork.

I HATE bureaucracy. The bigger they are, the harder they are to work under. And I’m thinking I need one of those headlamps, I’m so far under.

I went shopping for a bra today. Good GRIEF why do they not make them to fit real people? They squash you, prop you up, tuck you in or just look saggy and wrinkly. And they cost too much - I could spend a car payment on bras without really trying.

I’d be tempted to just go without, if not for the way that would become painfully obvious at work.

I balanced my checkbook, too. I hadn’t realized it had been six months. At least it ended with my having underestimated actual balance by $100.

Which I spend on bras.

There are days when a mastectomy actually sounds like a bargain.

Here I thought roaches were coming inside to die on my floor after the bug man sprays outside.

I swept up a roach this morning that, once tossed into the dumpster, began running around. If you flip a roach on its back it will lay there until it dies - they can’t flip back over. I can only guess my cat has been flipping over roaches in the kitchen.

Good kitty!

Time to call management again. Bug guy never knocked on my door yesterday like he was supposed to, and in my hypervigilance to welcome a man with insecticide in, I accidentally found myself talking to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I was thinking about this today, after having to put in another request for fixing a light fixture. Here’s everything about the apartment that’s been replaced.

Every single lightbulb (mostly by me)
The roof
The garage door
linoleum (before move in)
carpet (before move in)
gaskets in two sinks
light fixture in bathroom

Things that had to be fixed:
the stove
the dishwasher (i figured that one out myself)

I’m waiting for the walls to cave in or the counters to crack. I’ll be here hugging my renter’s insurance policy, waiting for a better apartment.

Because I just noticed the last two posts refer to gaining weight. Good grief, I’m trying to tell myself something!

…of sleep, and I can’t go back to bed.

I woke half an hour ago to find a BIG F’ING roach marching across my cheek. After the inevitable screaming and flailing, it vanished somewhere in the vicinity of a basket of clean clothes and my closet. My cat, useless and chicken, fled the scene.

Rationally, I know these things are everywhere - and yet I cannot sleep.

This morning I go in at 10. So I get to watch Lost online and drink coffee at home… and forget things.

I knew last night that my cell phone was nearly dead, but had a headache and crashed early, and did not get it on charger. This morning I am feeding the birds and looking up last night’s lost episode, and I think, need to get cell phone charged. So I go after it.

On the way down the hall I smell cat box, and stop to clean it. In the kitchen, I make coffee and rinse some dishes. Fend off the cats, one of which licked my head every hour for most of the night and kicked my face this morning having a kitty panic attack. Come back to finish Lost. Realize I left the phone in my purse. Go get it, plus bluetooth headset, and come back - only to find that I had gotten phone plus the little round pill case I carry sudafed and headache meds in. Go back to return pill case and get headset.

I can imagine what this is leading up to. I’ll leave the house, forget my car key, go back. Get to the garage door, forget coffee, go back. Get to the car, realize I left the phone on the charger, go back. Get to the intersection, realize I left my shoes, go back….

1. breathing (harder than it sounds - allllllergieeeees)
2. sleeping (harder than it sounds - people pounding on roof for hours)
3. not stabbity-stab-stabbing or throwing things at people pounding on roof

I just got one of those privacy notices from some foundation in another state that I am certain I have nothing to do with. They have the right mailing address with incomplete information on it, but it got to me anyway. All legitamite contacts would have correct info on them.

So I’m scratching my head at the PO Box return address in New York and the return mail address in Texas, and staring at the information they want me to include on the form — my name, address AND social security number? — and decide that I don’t care to tell them how to use my information if they can’t explain to me adequately who they are, how much they know about me, HOW they know about me, and why I should acknowledge to them that I exist. These privacy notices supposedly determine how they use my information. Well, I don’t know what they know. I’m not giving them something they may not know.

There is no phone number on this. I remain dubious. I do not like this, Sam I am, I would not like to be part of a scam. I would not like it in a box, I would not like it wearing socks. I do not like your little scam, Sam.

Now if only I can get the fic back.

gr. arg.

Only for me, it would be ‘tiiiiiiiiime!’ As in ‘I HATE TIME CHANGES!’

I swear it took three hours to wake up this morning because my body did not agree with the alarm clock a’tall.

And now I have once again missed a window of opportunity by assuming it was earlier than it is, and cannot go to the store I had intended to visit.

If someone says “you should have the pneumonia vaccination” and “when was your last tetanus booster” take a few things into consideration.

1. Tetanus shots make your arm, shoulder and part of your back sore. You might be lucky and get away with a sore little knot; I of course am not lucky and get the whole gamut of OUCH.

2. Pneumonia shots may induce flu-like symptoms, as in, ALL of them. I’ve missed work because I’m so fatigued.

Pills good. Lots of pills better.

They gave me the shots in my right arm, so now it hurts to drive my new car. Waa!

If only the ugly red strip down my arm would go away. I keep stopping myself from scratching. It’s also not useful that the cat will insist on bonking her head against my right shoulder.

Speaking of the cat, I’ve resorted to throwing a blanket over the hood and windshield — she likes to sit on the warm hood when I’ve parked in the garage, which is of course where I park a shiny new sporty vehicle with a nice stereo. Little paw prints show up real well on a white car.

And of course, I put one of my white Apple decals on the rear window.

What should I name my car? Any suggestions? The Mach 5 is right out.

When you have the tv, dvd, vcr, stereo and assorted other things all where you want them and working, do not put a nail in the wall unless you are certain the wiring does not run through that square centimeter of drywall.

x_x

Updated Home in a Handbasket with some additional pages.

Am concerned about a variety of things, not the least of which is whether the post office is really going to deliver my mail.

Internet was down most of the day today. Bleh. I had to argue with tech support - just because it said ‘wrong password’ didn’t mean I was typing it wrong. Also, if you have DSL, you also get dialup as part of the package, and the login is the same - tech tried to BS me about needing a different password for DSL. Uh, no, it worked before, regardless of my usage of dialup, it is the same either way. Just because my DSL abruptly stops working in the middle of surfing my usual blog rounds and you don’t have a clue what’s wrong, that does not mean you can make up crap just to sound knowledgable. All I wanted to know is whether they were having server issues, not to get a lecture about ‘you have to type it the same both times, ok?’ And for the eighty bajillionth time - I HAVE A MAC, stop telling me to use Windows software to do things, and HEY, your web page code is CRAP, it’s not my browser! As I recall the page didn’t load on the Windows box I used when setting up the router the first time, either.

Why yes, I hate calling tech support.

But my car runs without steaming, leaking, or blinking red lights at me.

And now that it’s working, I did a costco run. Hopefully by next Tuesday (payday!) I will be able to function as a fully employed human adult, and get actual groceries instead of quick fix food. (You know, they say it’s cheaper to cook than to buy pre-made and so forth… but I’m having Issues. As in, I need some of those plastic storage containers, and staples, and some other things I left behind or just borrowed from Roommate.) By then I will have run all the previously stored dishes through the dishwasher and unpacked all the boxes, thereby creating an environment in which I will not discover some critical item is still “in a box.” I’ve been averaging a box a day, and slowly figuring out how to reconfigure my things into the available cupboards, nooks and crannies.

After I hit ‘publish,’ I mean.

I feel like I am trapped in a time warp. No internet access for a week? I lose all touch with chronology. Add the time change (what daylight are we saving again?) and days of trainings and talking to people I don’t know about things I don’t understand completely yet, and whee!

Serendipity, so generous with the free fridge (see previous posting made from Friend’s house), has left me in the lurch. I am only now recovering, and slowly. The power was turned on Monday after a whining phone call to Huge Corporate Utility Company, and my cat, after two days and nights in a cold empty apartment alone, was absolutely worshipful when I deigned to actually sleep in my bed. She purred for two hours straight - I am actually underestimating this, probably, as I wasn’t timing her and she was purring when I woke up the next morning too.

The phone company said my service was on, but alas, no dial tone - so they blamed inside wiring, which lets them off the hook. I just waited til today, when the dude was supposed to physically show up and get me DSL. Dude must have noticed no actual phone service and hooked me up, as I expected he would. But, still no DSL, which is why I’m on dialup trying to pay the bills online before my cell phone provider repos my phone and my credit card adds a late fee. I came home to an actual phone message on the machine that’s been plugged into the wall since Monday - the phone company, telling me there’s a problem with my cabling so DSL will have to wait a while longer. I’m already sweating the loss of Lost, which has re-engaged me only because of the plight of Desmond and the endless curiosity about what the frak will happen to Locke, who totally made me angry last season but has now become something of a tragic character to me - if only because he’s so in need of serious therapy. I hope DSL happens in time to catch BSG. Of course, I’ll be driving to Fresno tomorrow night, partially to pick up items such as my microwave, which conveniently got left in the apartment when we loaded the Uhaul…

…which precipitated a whole week of eating out for breakfast, lunch and dinner, because… my stove doesn’t work, which I didn’t know over the weekend because the power was off, and with no way to heat water for tea/coffee? reheat leftover chinese? boil pasta? Heh. My kitchen is where I go to be frustrated by all the dishes I’ve kept in storage and need washing.

Becaaaaaause, my dishwasher didn’t work, either.

And at this point I nearly blew a gasket and left a message on my property manager’s voicemail. Holes in window screens are to be expected. Not being able to shift dead spiders and white filmy gick out of my glasses in a single run of the dishwasher was just icing on the I-hate-moving cake.

I realized while typing all this just how much emotional turmoil I’ve been going through. It’s difficult to move from an environment where no one pays any attention to you to an office where the support staff knock on your open door, approach you with respect and snap to it when you ask them for something — just a few months ago, I was support staff. It’s difficult to be in a town where you don’t know how to drive or which lane to be in — that sounds trivial, but if you get in the wrong lane, you have miles of stop and go traffic just to find a u-turn opportunity, because it’s bumper to bumper here all day. And, my car is slowly coming to pieces. Neither of the back windows work - I have the feeling the motors are disconnected from the whatever-holds-them-up, and one of them slides downward while I’m driving. The coolant tank idiot light comes on all the time. It’s full, and the car’s fine, but it flashes like I’m running a disco on my dashboard. I took it to a mechanic who said it was a sensor and I’d have to have the reservoir replaced to fix it, which isn’t a big deal. Except, where it used to run with the needle right between C and H, now it gets really hot and the fan comes on every ten minutes, where it used to never come on at all.

And, no furniture. Nothing on the walls. Just me, the bird, the cat, and lots of books. On top of everything I miss my roommate.

The laundry’s piling up. My washer and dryer come on Sunday.

The good news? Well, I still like my job. I’m calling to set up appointments and finding some parents who will actually bring in their kids. I have another friend who’s interviewing for jobs in NewTown as well. My new apartment is quiet at night. My renter’s insurance actually dropped in price with the move. (My car insurance went up - go figure. Probably due to fender benders, which I’m betting happen all the time around here in stop-n-go city.) And I figured out the dishwasher didn’t work because the hot water was turned off under the sink. They’re bringing someone in to fix the stove soon, and I’ll have a microwave by Saturday night.

I feel like I’ve been gone somewhere forever and ever, and it’s only been five days since my last post. I think I need to start keeping an actual journal.

ETA: The salad stuff is frozen. The milk is frozen. My fridge is too efficient and again with the nothing to eat.

And, well, now I have to drive to Fresno, but there’s DSL.

There comes a time in every live-together relationship when you want nothing more than to break something over the head of the other party.

Roommate tends to get really short and snippy and hissy when he’s really focusing on something he’s doing on the computer. So I’ve pretty much stopped trying to talk to him then, instead saving things for tv time, as he’s generally watching something on dvd and those can be paused.

I, too, get snippy when focused on something on the computer. Especially when it’s bills, balancing the checkbook, or some iffy online application that has hideous inconsistent cooperation with my attempts to fill it in.

So what happens? He gets back from four days of incessant relaxation and computer gaming at his brother’s house, and I’m getting home. He’s all bubbly and talkative, and I’m focused on two things. Paying bills, and filling out an application that MUST be mailed tomorrow.

RM: *boing boing boing* sohowwasyourweekend!
Me: *updating financial software* grrrrr. fine.
RM: Did you (endless stream of things I didn’t hear)?
Me: *glare, opens application*
RM: I blah blah blah — You’re not listening, are you?
Me: *stares at pile of open bills, stares at open job application on screen, looks at RM* Do you actually listen when I talk to you while you’re doing this stuff?
RM: Oh. I’m ordering pizza for us. *zzzoooom*

Happily, we both have a license to grump at each other, without getting all wounded and whimpery about it.

Unfortunately, the neighbor’s kids started screaming when Roommate left the room, and I can’t growl at them.

I went to the local Sprint store. I must say that cell phone stores are an experience. I’ve always gotten mine online, so this was a first, but I wanted to know what my $$ would be getting me into.

Boy, what a bunch of toys. Like crackerjack prizes. Flimsy plasticy things that look like they should knock three digits off the price. Of course, you don’t really pay for the shell, you pay for the Bluetooth and the fancy MP3 ringtones and whatnot, but if the thing is going to ride around in the end pocket of my purse it shouldn’t scratch easy, nor should it be the size of a Cheerio.

Do I want a camera phone with video, with still, or no camera? Do I want speakerphone? What about web stuff? They all have web stuff, or at least they’re capable of it. Even if the screen is thumbnail-sized. One of them had a click wheel. Another had a hideous coloration, another had buttons I’d have to use a stickpin to press. The free phones seriously look like they belong in the hands of toddlers — icky pastel colors and totally cheap plastic.

I’m tossed between a nice matte-finish Motorola and another black phone with Bluetooth and a tiny display that shows who’s calling without opening the clamshell. But it’s a sure thing I’ll order on the web - activation is free that way. Which brings me to another thing - why they have stores at all. The place was totally empty, and the sales guy practically jumped into my arms. Distraction! Of course, he also had a really neat phone he could play games on, between customers.

If you have commented and it didn’t show up, it probably was eaten by the insanely effective spam trap and deleted along with the billion or so card game spams that bombarded my blog comments all weekend. It’s just insane how the spammers believe I’m going to waste money on backgammon, texas holdem or any other online game.

For the fourth or fifth (losing count these days) time in my life, I’m deciding to ignore the news sites and news radio and news on tv. They found JonBenet’s killer, and now it’s going to turn US news media into an endless cycle of specials, bulletins, and 24/7 coverage that borders on assault.

I do not need to hear about the guy in intimate detail. I don’t need to hear about his history as a sex offender, his spotty job performance, his habit of eating kittens for lunch, his horrible childhood, his bad wardrobe choices or his ex-wife’s testimonial as to his impotence or general inability to be a man. I do not need to hear the neighbors he’s had in the past 20 years exclaiming that he was ’such a nice man.’ I do not need to hear townspeople exclaiming how they suspected it was him because x, y and z. I do not need to hear from the police who found him nekkid in a back alley in Bangkok with a child prostitute. I do not need to know his favorite website was Myspace, he was left-handed, he was Republican, he was OMG! feeling so guilty! never would have hurt her! I do not need to hear endless jokes and top ten lists. I do not need to see his face photoshopped into images or videos. I do not need to see endless posting across the internet as to how he should be punished, whether beheading is too good for the SOB or whether he’s just sick and misunderstood.

I only needed to know he’s been caught. I’m actually relieved, for the dad’s sake.

Now can we move on to catch some other child-killer?

Note: I don’t know that any of this is true. Some details I’ve seen mentioned in blurbs, the rest I made up, but I really don’t know. Because I don’t want to. Because I have better things to do than waste energy sharing yet another cultural obsession.

Either way, I won’t be participating in the bread and circuses.

To the person who has tried and tried to restart the car outside in the lot, like, 2,000,000 times:

TOW. TRUCK.

It’s not starting. The starter turns over. The engine doesn’t.

CLUE.

You have my sympathies with the bum car thing, really, but there is nothing more annoying than LISTENING TO YOU try to start a car that WON’T. You’ve heard that definition of insanity, where it’s “trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results” — please learn from it.

Get Triple A.

No love,
your neighbor

I prefer mine tolerably cool. Something in the low 90s would be a nice change.

Today I noticed the strawberries were wilting something fierce, so I stepped out to water them and stupidly did not put shoes on my feet. I burnt the bottoms of my feet on the patio. That was hours ago. They still hurt.

I have drunk about ten gallons of water so far this week. I have lingered in various air conditioned places and added about ten minutes of walking to my journey across campus to an appointment by walking through classroom buildings I didn’t have to enter.

It’s supposed to be in the 90s soon. I am so ready for that. Not soaking my shirts the instant I leave the front door would be good.

I keep hearing about rolling blackouts. When I got home, there was a blackout, all right - only it stayed for a good six hours. No traffic lights, no anything. The power had been out long enough before then for my laptop to get down to less than 2% of a charge. The temperature outside was 111F; inside it was 92F.

When Roommate got home, he found me sprawled out and reading in the dying daylight. We went out for Thai food — beyond the perimeter of the blackout, of course, it was only a couple of blocks wide — and stuffed ourselves on fresh naan bread, chicken curry, samosas and all sorts of other wonderful things. Then we bought bags of ice to take home to stuff in the refrigerator.

By 10:30, we had the windows open and were trying to get the inside temp to shave off a few degrees. It got to 95F and the fish tank was in danger of becoming a bowl of poached fish. The cats were doing great imitations of carpets. So was I. And then, in a gush of hot air followed by flowing currents of cold, and the flicker of clocks and aquarium light and several other lights, and the sudden hum of the refrigerator, the power came back. And from outside I heard people shouting ‘yaaaaaay!’ And pretty soon, we had everything back to normal. We fell asleep around 11:30.

And then the random fax machine that leaves beeping on our machine every so often woke me up at 3.

Grrrr. I have two obligations today, and my car is in dire need of attention, and there are other things I should do but probably won’t - I think I will be in need of a nap somewhere in there. I was already tired from working 8 hours and driving back and forth without AC.

All this, and PMS too. Yesterday was a bitch. I’d like to slap it.

Grammar check in Word is only marginally helpful, and each time it mistakes a noun for a verb, this perception shifts ever so steadily toward ‘useless.’

Six month hiatus?

Er? BSG hanging loose for a month or two was one thing, but six months in the middle of a season?

ARRRR.

I had the “email me when there are comments in moderation” unchecked, and did not remember why. So I checked it when I redid the blog layout yesterday.

Just now I got 35 emails saying there were comments in moderation. I have a plugin that forces people to fill in name and email - these are comments with no information, triggering the blog to email me but not actually leaving a comment anywhere. All of them are directed at http://www.zakhad.com/wp/1969/12/31// which is just weird because this blog wasn’t around in 1969, nor was any other blog.

Inadequate spam bot, get thee behind me.

Oh look, ten more emails. It’s really slamming the blog.

I’m turning into a housewife. For the first time since I was… 19, I am unemployed. I had intended to get in some quality loafing before signing up for temp work. Today I took the stepcat to the vet, tomorrow I’ll probably end up taking Roommate’s car in to the dealer for a flat repair, and I’ll also likely be scheduling and implementing stepcat’s surgery. Poor woobie has a cyst that keeps ballooning on her lower lip. I’ve also been cleaning house and talking to the pest control guy, who stuck a glue trap in our water heater closet (yay, being kept up by squeaking stuck rodents!). I’m just waiting for my Official June Cleaver Club kit to arrive, thank you.

Yeah, no kids. But if you have to be a housewife, do it without the kids. Otherwise in addition to the boring to-do list above, there would be boring details about soccer practice and homework.

Anyway, the county is wrecking my launch into my new career. Turns out that every clinic and agency in town (all the ones I’ve called, anyway) relies on a county contract, and since the county has frozen their own hiring and essentially everything else related to mental health, any clinic/agency who isn’t the county also does nothing but collect resumes and apologize for the delay. I may have a relaxing summer.

Which I won’t really mind much. Wake me in July.

Overall, the cats - one decrepit, one declawed - have caught six mice since we moved in. Five of them in the past week.

I left a few days ago in the morning, noting on my way out that the cats were sitting near the bookcase too close together - they never sit that close unless something’s up. But I had to leave, so I did. And when I got home they were still there.

I sat at the computer for a few moments before they raced through the apartment into Roommate’s bedroom, where they sat in front of his smallest bookcase near his bed (yes, we have five bookcases). And that was when I saw the mouse.

The Great Mouse Hunt lasted for a few hours, as the cats dashed around after it, while it tunneled under the sheets on the bed, scrambled into the mess of wires behind the desk, romped into the bottom shelf of one of the other bookcases and hid behind the collected works of Cherryh. I think by the time Roommate got home his bedding and most of the books were in one corner, the cats were bouncing off the walls, and I was tired of looking under things. The mouse was nowhere to be seen. We found it again once before it vanished again. Roommate was ready to start moving the heavy stuff when I, poking around with his walking stick, found the fuzzball cleverly hiding on the hilt of one of Roommate’s Japanese swords propped up in a corner near the bookcases. One waste can ride to the dumpster later, no more mouse.

Until five minutes later, when the other mouse raced from under the bookcase in the living room. Fortunately that one was quickly wastecanned.

This morning, declawed cat kept running over to a small cupboard we use for a phone stand. I told her, look, no mouse - and opened it up and there was a mouse, sitting there on the phone book. At which point I shut it again, went to the clinic, came home, opened the cupboard and used the kitty poop scoop to pitch the mouse into the waste can. Off to the dumpster!

I think I’ll get a bunch of traps. I’m tired of waiting for Orkin. If a declawed cat is doing a better job than management’s “professionals” it’s time to take things into my own hands.

… well, it’s not, it’s just a post.

We’ve been having lots and lots of calls from people doing surveys. I figured out why the other day when Roommate answered the phone. I was happily burning a DVD, minding my own business, and I hear him in the other room politely chatting, and I thought, “huh, must be a family member or something.” Which is rare, because even though he and his whole family are on great terms he’s not one to sit on the phone a lot. Then I heard some of what he was saying. He was answering questions about his thoughts on some child-related issue, maybe no child left behind or some bond on the ballot.

Thing is, researchers are like cats - feed one of them and the next thing you know there’s a dozen ravening flea farms yowling at the door. So he leaves town for a couple days, and the phone rings every hour. Sometimes if I’m going to be home for a while, I answer because if you break the cycle by answering the computer drops your number off the list. But, unlike him, I’ve developed a series of personas to get them off the phone. Just now, I was the babysitter. Tomorrow I think I’ll be the three year old.

I suppose I could just demand to be taken off the list, or something. Maybe I’ll try that next week. It didn’t seem to work a few weeks back - they’re still calling.

The thermometer outside just topped 100F.

No wonder it was so miserable driving across town.

I didn’t go to yoga tonight, because I pulled a muscle in my back putting on a tank top while getting ready to… go to yoga.

In other news, getting more broke.

In still other news, not having air conditioning in my car sucks greasy swamp water.

In still other news, not happy with the school, as once again, paperwork submitted several times has failed to be processed and “we don’t know” remains their idea of an acceptable answer. Half-tempted to demand my money back.

I hate being awakened by a cop and told that kids got into my car.

They swiped twenty cents and my yoga mat.

Say what?

Yes. Teenagers getting off on stealing some old lady’s sweat soaked exercise mat. The security guard drove through the lot and saw them running from my car. They left the gas cap cover open, the windshield wipers on, the middle compartment open, the glove box open, and there’s no clue of how they got in. It’s habitual for me to get out, lock, slam, make sure the door’s closed all the way.

Oh, yeah. A screwdriver and pliers were missing, as well as the manual for the car. oooooooooooo. Bet that’ll get two bucks at the swap meet. An allowance is so passe.

Me, angry? nawwww. It’s much easier to cope with this than having my front door kicked in. Now, that was traumatic. This, I can amuse myself imagining those kids bragging about the YOGA MAT they swiped. I’m sure it put up a valiant struggle.

The compressor in my car is shot - no air conditioning this summer. The part by itself is 900 smackers, plus all kinds of labor, plus hoses and whatnot because if you’re gonna do part of the system, you might as well do it all. The car is worth, oh, 1500 or so, if I did the repair. Not worth it. I’d rather keep the money and use it for a downpayment on something else. Or a plane ticket.

I scheduled a full day of appointments. Plus a group, which I intend to get going if it kills me. One person shows up, all day — the least likely person to do so, funnily enough — and the rest? Who knows? Except for the one who decided she wasn’t going to come back at all. She called and left me a message.

I am dying by increments here - it would not be the end of the world to have a few weeks overlap, I’ll still be able to walk with the rest and get hooded in May. But it’s a doggone irritation to go through all the trouble of photocopying material, planning out the first group session, and have no one there. On the plus side it gave me a productive session with the one who showed, who was busily psyching herself out all day in preperation for it — “I’ve only just gotten comfortable with you,” she says, and she’s been coming since last July. Monumental anxiety, there. On the minus side? AAAAAAGH! I need ten hours this week. I’ve had three. If everyone shows up tomorrow I’ll have nine.

And people aren’t emailing me back! Tres annoying.

My DSL inexplicably died last night. (Dropping me out of AIM and everything else I had going - sorry, Jemima.)

This morning it was still blinking orange on the router - the DSL signal is there but I’m not able to login to the network, So I’m on dialup trying to pay some bills and unable to open the bank page.

They’re testing the service this morning - hopefully they fix it soon. Gah. Arg.

I got home from yoga (two hours!) needing a shower, and of course, the water’s turned off. This not notifying residents of such things is really really really really getting old. I’ve been sitting here for three hours waiting around in my bathrobe, and not having coffee or a shower or anything I normally have, cause there’s no water to even cook anything — we ate cheesesticks for brunch because they bake and don’t require much cleaning up after.

So I’m hating the complex managers. I could have picked up bottled water on the way home instead of getting all the way there, taking off my clothes, realizing there is no way to un-sweaty myself and make myself presentable, and go mad by degrees as the dudes putter around and “go for parts.”

This Luann strip, like the last few before it, pisses me off.

Greg Evans has embarked on a series of strips wherein Dad instructs his son Brad in the ways of men and women, and with each stereotype presented I just get mad. I know men who remember birthdays — they’re the ones who come across as actually caring about the people they send the card/flowers to. I know men who have social skills, too. They’re generally ones with good jobs, rational wives, sane parents and well mannered kids. This stuff doesn’t come out of a vacuum; manners and social skills and all-around thoughtfulness are learned behaviors, and the converse aren’t genetically heritable traits. If you expect little boys to become little stereotypes, guess what you’ll have?

DUH.

I think I’ll go back to ignoring that particular strip.

… the outcome of my car problem. It was, of course, maliciousness on the part of the car that lit the service light, and nothing more. They changed the oil and reset the computer and called it ‘working order’.

To offset this good fortune that removed several zeroes from my imagined auto repair expense, I came home and found a dead bird, right where I could step on it and do the icky-squicky dance. My roommate’s cat may be old, but she’s still got it. She’s just too senile to actually do more than pull off a few feathers and give up. “What was I doing? Eating? This tastes like feathers!”

Still with the not-showing-up clients. And, the rumors of closing down the clinic are running round and round. Joy.

My ’service engine’ light went on tonight. My car knows that I have a little money, and it wants a cut.

I purposely drove by dealerships on the way home, threatening to replace it, but I suspect that it knows I have no real employment, only imaginary part time employment, and no one would give me a loan. The service light stayed on.

I pray that it is merely a simple filter, but I fear that it is Something Serious. Even though it runs fine.

Scheduled: 6 hours of client time, two of paperwork/phoning, one of lunch.

Actual: 1/2 hour client time, one phone contact with client who has stomach flu, one constant busy, one answering machine, two lines disconnected and one “not at this number”. 6+hours of attempted phone calls and writing notes for charts: “called, no answer/left message/disconnected/other.” One letter mailed: “why haven’t I heard from you?”

Studies have shown that people who pay for therapy actually show up. People who are willing to spend money for it are generally people who “buy in” and really want help. Them’s the breaks.

And I’m not talking Tom.

I got home intending to do yoga, come home and finish (start, actually) the paper. The Last Paper. The Paper To End All Papers. The one I put off to finish a fic.

I found Roommate growling at his computer. Seems that, in the way of any red-blooded hetero male with access to decent internet connectivity, he surfed far and wide one night when he couldn’t sleep, and checked around in the wild n wooly vat o’ porn that’s out and about the WorldWideWeb. And came down with some pernicious popups, browser hijackers, and other items, including one that pretended to be Windows XP and told him to buy something called SpyAxe to get rid of them.

I just finished the cleanup, three hours later, after halting him just shy of punching in his credit card. It really was convincing looking, this spyware that pretended to be anti spyware.

Prevent internet VD. Always use a firewall, a virus checker, and a good adware remover, or a Mac. Or you too may owe me (or some more local geek) a pizza.

Guess I’ll just go to yoga tomorrow.

Every time we renew the lease here, which we’ve done for two years (wow! that long?), the rent creeps up a little. Which is to be expected, of course. This December, however, they’ve decided to add pet rent. Wherein we pay an extra 20 per pet, which is unreasonable. That would add sixty bucks to the rent that supposedly covers pet damage that our pets do not do, what with one living in a cage unless supervised, and one being declawed, and the other religiously dragging her claws across the cardboard scratching post and never across other things. And, that’s in addition to the pet deposit we dropped on move in, which we would get back because, no damage. You can vacuum/shampoo carpets to get rid of pet hair.

So I’m upset. Though the rent would still be about what we’d pay for a place with fewer features, and neither one of us really wants to move away, my budget accounts for minute raises per lease renewal, not pushing it up about eighty bucks at a go. It’s really annoying that the minute I’m about to go on a very marginal fixed budget this happens.

ETA: Roommate rules. He’s negotiated with the office for a decrease. They’re saying pet rent was always the policy, that they’re just now enforcing - the current managers have been here all of two months. Our point is, no one said that was the policy when we moved in and we’re cutting you a special deal — they said ‘give us a deposit’ and that was the end of it. If we had known about the policy we wouldn’t have been here — we’re not going to pay extra rent just because we have pets.

I am so buying a condo when I get enough for a deposit. The rental policies around this town are getting ridiculous, with a capital RID.

These weekend one unit classes are killers. I sat in one for four hours last night, and have to put in another 7-8 hours today, and the instructor is the most repetative, babbly, vague and easily distracted one I’ve had in five years of less than stellar instructors.

I’ll be the one in the back on the internet. Or asleep on the keyboard. Gaaaaaaaahhhhhh, the things I do for another lousy unit of credit.

Edited, 11:10 am: Zzzzzz…. zzzz…. Almost lunch? wakes up slooooowly….

Edited, 4:30 pm: Dang. Know what I learned? That those case manager jobs I considered weren’t worth considering. Way too much work for near-minimum wage. That wasn’t what the class was about, but eh. I’m home, and wishy-washy scattered prof didn’t make us do anything other than write a page on the class. I told the truth. Too much info, not enough focus.

Getting really, really tired of the political recordings that I’ve gotten every day for the past couple of weeks. The first one was about the bill that’s about forcing girls to inform their parents whenever they go for an abortion. It was half-dramatized, so for a bit I thought I’d gotten a realllllly wrong number from someone who was in need of medical attention, then realized the moaning and whispering and happy shouting were supposed to be a desparate girl suddenly overjoyed to see her dear father come through the door. Which is so not what would happen. A girl who feels safe enough to talk to her parents will do that, so no joyous reunion would be necessary; a girl who doesn’t feel safe and faces emotional/physcial abuse if she’s caught knocked up wouldn’t greet dad with open arms and carols of joy.

Then there are the recordings that start, “hi, I’m Rob Robson, and I’m hoping you’ll join me in voting for this Big Bill Supported By The Pharmaceutical Companies, who paid for this ad. They really want you on Prozac so they’ll keep these calls coming all month! Come back tomorrow, when I’ll call you about one of the other Big Bills you should vote for!” Well, that’s not what it really says, but you get the picture.

And the news: “do you have all the facts you need to vote? join us as we take a hard look at both sides of each issue.” And the commercials: “Vote No on 75! Vote Yes on 76!”

And look! There’s the Governator! He wants to reform Sacramento to rebuild Cully-fon-ya. I guess he’s also trying to rename it. We need a bill to provide diction lessons for this guy.

In the meantime, I’ve already voted absentee. So I’m sitting here listening to the answering machine record recordings of actors playing voting citizens and dramatizing mini-productions that cost someone a lot of money, shaking my head and wondering when it’ll be safe to answer the phone again.

Today, I felt like… crap.

I’ve had this odd cycle of mood swings. More like the tide, coming in and going out. I’ll go for a few weeks feeling fine, somewhat productive, positive attitude…. Then slowly I drop, until I’m so down I can’t think.

This morning I called in sick — which amounts to not much of anything, because I don’t get sick pay and therefore can’t run out of it or get paid. This afternoon I went to the clinic anyway, to do one specific thing. Ended up doing all sorts of other things, and not making the call — and that was my mood. For some reason, I just couldn’t do it. It reminds me of that Bible verse that goes something like “do what I know I should not do” — the flesh is weak, and I am too much flesh. Also, I didn’t go to yoga again. I have the feeling that if I let myself I could sleep through the entire week. Which is bad, because I still don’t understand my homework, and thus haven’t done it yet.

I wish I had time to wait for the mood to swing up again. Alas. I must inhale chocolate and soldier on.

Busier than I want to be. Behind in homework/reading - which is not good, major assignment due in two weeks. Something tells me I will turn in a half-*ssed draft, and though this makes me wince, the last time I did so I got an A, so…. Still going to try getting through the lit review this weekend, if I can find index cards to help me be organized.

At the Job, I’m still trying to balance the books, which is complicated by the fact that Boss waited until July to let me start using Quickbooks, which is difficult to do historical bookkeeping in, especially when recordkeeping prior to that point was .. stuffing papers in folders, each neatly labeled by month. And, not all the paperwork got in the folders. Which was how I ended up with a five digit deposit that went uncategorized until mysteriously the invoice it belonged to turned up, at which point I realized that I had already reconciled May. Silly me, thinking a computer program would be so flexible as to allow for the deletion and re-adding and clearing of a deposit properly booked to pay off the invoice in question. Silly me. I ended up undoing the reconciliations all the way back to January, as for some screwball reason the end of year reconciliation for 2004 undid itself, leaving me with a long winding trail of wildly-varying end and beginning balances that didn’t match the statements at all.

If you did not understand that paragraph, you’re where I was at a few months ago, and I’m very sorry. Not as sorry as I was for me — the pain is quadrupled when the company you work for expects you to make it all balance, and yet, they fail to provide the paper trail that would tell me where the money goes, where it comes from, and then, “oh no! why is this balance sheet so off!” Because you wouldn’t answer those questions I was asking. Remember being annoyed when I interrupted your deep contemplation of what you wanted at Starbucks? That question. It went something like “do you remember what this two grand was paying for? I need to know so the reports don’t look funny, cause otherwise it will wind up being “uncategorized…”

So, yeah. My brain has been sucked off into AR/AP mazes. I’m a therapist not a bookkeeper! Yet the coworkers keep plotting to find ways to convince me to stay past December.

Sigh.

Still ficcing, though it’s slow.

The week has managed to be even more stressful.

Yesterday, my car said, “Service Engine Soon!” And then it stopped saying it.

Today, I dropped off the car at Crazy Mechanic Guy’s service station. He’s less than half a block from the chiropracter, who has so far taken $150 of my money, and is sooo worth it.

CMG tuned up my car about six months ago - the 90k tuneup, to be exact. Which involved spark plug replacement. And a few weeks ago, he changed the oil, flushed the radiator system, noted that it was burning some serious crude — I’d put two quarts in between changes and it was still nearly dry when I dropped it off — and put a new thermostat in it. That was the $200 oil change. The tuneup was also $200, thereabouts.

So, this time, I think to myself, “this is because he didn’t do the oxygen sensor.” I’ve been told some 50k back that in Saturns the O2 sensor will go out every 30k so the idiot light goes on and you get the car in for routine maintenance. It seems to be true so far.

Sure enough, the sensor’s bad. He also wanted to check the catalytic converter, which turned out to be okay. Unfortunately….

CMG: You have oil in two cylinders and Ineedtoreplaceallthesparkplugsandblahblahblah. (he has this accent and he talks fast.)

ME: Oil… in cylinders? LIKE YOU FOUND WHEN YOU TUNED UP THE CAR? And didn’t FIX? (he mentioned this before, in a ‘it’s not serious’ sort of way)

CMG: ….

ME: YOU COULD HAVE FIXED THIS BEFORE IT GOT THIS BAD.

CMG: It needs valve cover gasket and grommets, Saturn puts in grommets to keep oil out of cylinders and they get oldsoweneed toreplace them.

ME: It was leaking before! Kits with valve cover gaskets and grommets are CHEAPER than the extra HOURS of labor! The tuneup is basically UNDONE because you didn’t want to wait for GROMMETS. From the dealership TWO BLOCKS AWAY.

CMG: I take money off you only payfourhundredfifty.

ME: …. YES. OKAY. Fix my car.

So yeah, he took off what was basically the equivalent of what I paid on the tuneup, and got the car done by five when I got off work, and he loaned me a 70s model Dodge Dynasty while he worked on it. And I paid the equivalent of a month’s rent anyway, but I’ve paid more money for less work. He also told me he’d check any other ’service engine soon’ errors for free if it ever went on again. And now the car runs better, doesn’t idle as high as it was before, and hopefully this will end the oil burning thing. (At least for another year, just long enough for me to think about leasing something else, or buying a cute little Mini.)

And on top of that I still need a haircut and a new outfit, since I was insane enough to volunteer to do checkin for a fancy dinner party for Boys and Girls club.

So! Way to blow a whole month’s income on unforseen emergencies, in the first week of the month when rent’s also due! YAY poverty!

Scheduling is beside the point at the moment, however. This morning I woke, stretched, and suddenly almost passed out. I had to roll out of bed because I had lost the ability to lever myself up in the normal fashion. Many tears carefully suppressed because deep breathing hurt, many naughty words, and many winces and whines later, my roommate got me in the car and to the chiropracter’s office, where I was crunched and cracked and suddenly able to move my arms again.

I had to cancel too many clients and spent the day swearing at the phone; just when I drifted off into nice relaxed slumber, it rang. I never answered, they never left a message. I’m sure it was the idiot credit card company trying to sell me services I don’t need.

I daresay yoga is a few weeks from being reality at this point. I’m really, really sore, and can’t stay in one position very long, so keep aggravating the injury. And now I have reached the limit of what I can type comfortably. So much for getting Important RL Things done. Dang.

I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder this morning in yoga, trying to do something I’ve done before. That’ll teach me to listen when my body says “No, I don’t want to do a shoulder stand now.”

Still thinking Serenity thoughts, especially since I’ve caught glimpses of posts by folks who haven’t seen the series but saw the movie.

I have trouble remembering what I liked about books I try to re-read. For example, Stephen R. Donaldson. I remember liking his work before but am finding it harder to slog through now. A sign of improving taste, perhaps?

What is it with all the commercials for new seasons of crime shows using the metallic riff from the BSG theme song?????

It doesn’t matter what trivial thing I do, if I touch mySQL settings of any sort, I end up redoing code and resetting a bunch of passwords. I added a database and pow! both my blog and the Mod Blog went plooey and wouldn’t connect to MySQL. I have no idea why I got the errors I got or why I had to reset passwords willy-nilly…. But it’s fixed.

Whew.

An abbreviation I’ve seen around in some blogs: comp.

It’s not a comp. I’m not Lor, and my laptop is not a lapt. What you have is a com-pyoo-ter that is possibly a Pee Cee or a Mack but it is not a COMP.

It’s lazy and ambiguous. Every time I see it, I’m reminded of other things that have been ‘comps’ — comprehensive exams, or compysagnuthus (did you see Jurassic Park? they’re the little chicken sized ones that bite the kid on the beach in the opening scene of the book), or complimentary passes to an event.

If you need a shorter way to write ‘computer’ you may as well be specific — is it a PC or a Mac? A Sun terminal? What? Because it’s not a bloody COMP.

I’ve not posted on Katrina or the aftermath yet, mostly because I’ve been speechless — if not with horror then with rage.

There’s a lot of judgement that happens on a daily basis, from a lot of people. Yeah, it’s a part of being human — we all judge, and we all have to be good at it to function — but like anything else, sometimes moderation gets thrown out the window and the darts fly.

I’ve been hearing lots of opinionated sorts talking about how victims of the hurricane should have gotten out of the way, etc., and also that “it figures, NO was full of the French, and you know how they are.” To which I nearly popped out with an angry sarcastic quip, but it was someone’s client and you don’t do that in the workplace. I quietly suffered an aneurysm at the thought that someone not only remains conservative Republican in the face of all the idiocy being perpetrated in the name of the GOP, but that this person has swallowed whole that hideous anti-French lame-itudinous stereotype and is regurgitating it in reference to fellow Americans. Because while New Orleans did have a French Quarter and some significant French influences in its history, it’s part of the continental US of A, CLUE.

Judgement should, ideally, be preceded by actual thought. As in, hmmm — it’s an American city, full of American people. Hard-working souls who form a major part of the economy. Maybe, just maybe we should stop talking about the victims of the hurricane as if it’s their fault, and start helping them. YOU THINK?

Americans are attacked by terrorists, suddenly we’re all up in arms and unified. But Americans are blown around and flooded out by a storm that swelled from category 2 to category 5 within hours, and all Certain Graymatter-challenged Jerkoffs can do is sit around condemning people who lost their homes, their jobs, their lives — for what? Not walking fast enough to escape record-breaking gale-force wind or flood waters — after the trains/busses/planes stopped running?

News flash: there is not a single place on Earth where you can live in total safety. The whole L.A. basin, plus San Francisco, plus Coalinga, are all known earthquake zones — are we going to call people stupid for choosing to live there instead of, say, Ohio — where tornadoes sometimes happen? Or the East Coast, where shark attacks happen? Or Florida? Or the Phillipines? Or somewhere in Africa where drought happens? I don’t know what will happen to me — it’s entirely possible that some mountain in the Sierra Nevada will follow Mt St Helens’ example and bury me and about a million others under ash and/or lava. Because we have no control over Mother Earth. Unless you want to call slowly poisoning her over the last century “control.”

Americans who make careless judgemental comments make me wish there were such a thing as a clue-by-four, and that I could swing it. It feels like ‘not enough’ to click and donate. Every little bit helps, I know. But still, I wish that there were some way to beat sense into idiots living in their own private fool’s paradise with their sense of superiority, as if they would somehow be so much better at escaping the forces of nature.

Americans schizophrenic when it comes to France - Yahoo! News

No, they’re not schizophrenic — the word is ‘ambivalent.’

Americans do not think of France and experience hallucinations, hear voices, have bizarre delusions, exhibit blank or blunted facial expressions, develop inability to function socially, isolate themselves, and suffer poor memory, disorganized or slow thinking, or difficulty expressing and/or integrating thoughts for a duration of at least a month. They do not require medication to function normally after thinking about France. They do not develop catatonia or lose the ability to persist in goal-directed behavior after thinking about France.

If you see the word ’schizophrenia’ tossed about casually this way, or in reference to someone having multiple personalities, remember: it does not mean what anyone thinks it means. The media perpetuate a lot of misconceptions, and this is a pernicious and widespread one. Yes, ’schizophrenia’ means literally, from the Latin, ‘divided mind.’ But schizophrenia is not multiple personality, or ambivalence — it is a mind full of contradictory thought and sensation, and a more appropriate way to think of it is as a mind divided against itself and separated from reality.

Thank you for sending this little booklet called “Chart Your Course to a Master’s Degree.”

It’s just full of helpful tidbits of information that would have been useful three years ago when I was actually doing the charting. It might have saved me a few hikes around the campus, in fact. It certainly would have kept me from annoying well-meaning faculty I probably bugged too many times. However, now that I am advanced to candidacy and my course is not going to change (unless of course you cancel more classes and force me to), this booklet was a total waste of postage and glossy cardstock.

Once I have my diploma in hand you can bet I will be forever quit of you, never to look back. Ever.

Sincerely,
One of the grad students you hold captive while extorting higher and higher fees and canceling classes

P.S. Stop sending me stuff about orientations. Send it to the newbies.

Probably the only time I’ve used the word ‘woe’ in all seriousness.

The good news is, I have not been fired, not gone totally broke, not gone hungry, etc.

The bad news is, I will be going so much deeper into debt and going completely starkers. The college is still giving me the bend-over-and-take-it treatment, though this time it’s more a case of someone not fully explaining what the frell certain things meant — I likely will not only have to pull down loads of loans over the next two semesters because I will not graduate in December, not graduating in December automatically negates my ability to consolidate loans at the current low rate, thereby adding loads of interest to them. Tuition is likely rising again in spring and I’ll soon be unable to find a paying job that will continue to warp itself around insane fieldwork hours.

I could only avert this by suddenly increasing my client hours from five a week to about sixty a week, because I only have… counts on toes …five weeks left in summer term. Since the clinic is only open eight hours a day, this is quite unworkable. Most clinics are only open eight hours a day, so a second placement is unlikely to help much.

I HATE when inadequate information bites me this way! And it’s not like it’s information that’s accessible anywhere — the faculty did backflips trying to work out this first-time exception to the normal order of things that’s allowing me to even do any hours at all right now. I couldn’t just open a handbook or a website cause it’s just not there. So the only source of information, the mouth of the program director, failed to provide me with adequate details regarding the conditions by which I would still get out of school in December.

I could have kicked him — except the one way to make this situation worse would be damaging the guy in control of it all, wouldn’t it?

I will be offline for an indeterminate number of days as I attempt to rescue my data from a crashing laptop before it gets a wipe and reinstall. External firewire drive is on order, teeth are worn from all the gnashing, etc. etc.

Note to self: Always read up thoroughly before clicking.

Clicky finger is in big trouble.

Hate life now.

[edit] Ah. Now the hardware is failing, too. So perhaps it is not the clicky finger’s fault entirely…. But now I may still lose my checking account, 60 pages of fic (prolific lately, sad to say, which is why I was backing up), and various other things like, oh, the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica, which was five minutes from being completed when the crash hit. All my keychain passwords etc., my queue of things waiting to be uploaded, my WIPs in various stages of editing, and the spreadsheets upon which I had been planning the rest of my school schedule, my budget, and my slim-pickens-but-adequate diet will disappear.

Suckage. But I will never be caught out like this again. In addition to monthly DVD backups I will now have the firewire drive, upon which weekly backups will be scheduled via Automator.

Cross your fingers, appeal to your deity, and radiate positive energies in FedEx’s general direction so they get the drive here by Friday….

This morning, I woke up, but my Powerbook … was in a coma, since last night. I’d left it merrily downloading but it froze. Here’s what happens when a switcher encounters the very first system ‘boink’:

Freeeeeeeeze. Internal panic errors bounce around in brain. Then gently move mouse, tap keys, hope that it’s just slow.

Nope.

Place ear to keyboard, here whirring and hard-drive ticking noises. Press power button until *click* and the screen goes dark. Press power button again, with knot in stomach. Watch the little circle o’ hash marks for a while, then watch pale gray screen. Press power button. Repeat until logon box appears, sigh. Watch logon hang for a while. Press power button.

Search for disks that came with system. Realize DVD is still in drive and won’t eject. Growl at Roommate. Turn on Roommate’s computer and search for help. Discover that ejecting DVD is as simple as holding down mouse button; castigate self for not learning how to do this stuff before the crisis hit. Put in AppleCare disk. Reboot, watch ticking hash mark circle, get message to reboot. Three times.

Panic subsiding into determined geek mode.

Clunk self on head, find Tiger disk, put it in. Reboot. AH! Open disk utility, kiss repair disk button. Click. Wait. Read book. Wait. Steel self for ultimate failure, just in case, and prep for extended agony of waiting for the laptop to come back from warranty repair, the downloading and reinstalling of all the things I wanted to keep, the recreation of pages of fic and the entire year of transactions in my finance management software, the tweaking and configuring. Watch the repair finish and announce success. Reboot.

Logon takes forever.

Screen arrives.

Backup DVD-RWs come out and get cycled through the process.

The irony is, I sat down at the laptop this morning to do a complete backup. I think I’ll do it Saturday from now on.

Fresno Weather Forecasts on Yahoo! Weather

There’s just no such thing as easing into summer here. From 80-82 to 102 feels like being dropped in an oven.

Had a blisteringly stupid and frustrating day. But I got home to a confirmation message on the answering machine about the DSL, so cheered up. Plugged in router to its permanent home - roommate’s PC. Ran configuring site and …

would not browse the internet. Would not connect to the “configuration server” whatever that is. Called support. Escalated up the chain of geeks to a router geek. Then roommate got home while we were configging like mad, and told me to put the router under the desk when I was done, which led to me teasing him about not being able to hang it from the ceiling or set it up in the bookcase, at which point I said it would look neat on the Christmas tree next to my winking and blinking Enterprise ornament. The tech support geek snorfled and guffawed, then somehow we got in this conversation about his cats.

To make a long story short, the DSL works now, roommate has his PC back and is happily taking over the world one civilization at a time, and I’m downloading updates, watching vids, and looking for a good radio station.

Which, somehow, makes the blehness better. Yay geeks!

Found a form I’d been looking for while surfing college website. But, I was at work. And I was looking for a phone number to figure out why I hadn’t been notified about loans yet, not the form to accept offered loans.

Logged in this morning to find that the student loans are ready and waiting - all they need is an acceptance form from me, and the wheels will turn, and checks will go out.

I’ve googled and re-googled and checked every page at the financial aid website. No form.

grrrrr. fumes helplessly in the general direction of campus

If this university ever calls me to ask for alumni donations, I’m going to hang up on them.

I have apparently exceeded the approved allotment of units for a graduate program, so far as financial aid is concerned. I’m supposed to go file for an extension.

WHY? I am in a university program that all and sundry can tell is 60 units long. WHY doesn’t the fancy schmancy university software reflect that yes, my program, in which I am enrolled and advanced to candidacy and blahblahgoing to graduate-cakes, is 60 friggin’ units and not 47, which is the point at which financial aid yanks up the tent and goes home? WHY should I have to fill out paperwork that no one told me I needed to fill out to continue getting financial aid? If I hadn’t had this icky feeling that I get every semester that something’s going wrong and called out of the blue just to check, I would never have known — until it was too late to do anything but drop out. And hey, the gal acted all SURPRISED that I was worried! Uh huh. I hear the stories. I’m not the only one.

The chancellor’s office screwed up my schedule and made it impossible for me to graduate in December as planned and still work for money in Fall semester. The financial aid office wants to cut me off. I get the feeling they don’t want anyone to know how to get through any program without idiotic SNAFU’s like this, because this is the sort of thing that makes a three year program into a five year program — you miss one of their lame deadlines for papers you didn’t know existed, and you stay in school another year by missing a class or three since you couldn’t afford it. More money for them, more headache for you.

I have little to no sympathy for the university system here anymore. All their boo-hooing just irritates me now, because they seem to suddenly turn deaf whenever students have problems that could potentially screw up their lives. “Oh, well, that’s your problem.” Yeah, it is. You’ll hear about it the first time you hit me up for a hundred bucks, asshats. I’m keeping my money as my fees for babysitting your idiot bureaucracy until I got out of school with my sanity intact.

The Utility Company Who Goes Unnamed (otherwise known as pigs, goats and elephants) transferred my electric/gas service over to the property management I rent from.

I didn’t ask them to. Nor did management. Nor did the other three people who apparently have leases, just like me, who suffered the same revised bill coming in the mail with “CLOSED” printed on it and an offer of a credit reference.

Management gave a sigh of long-suffering and explained. I called Utility back and stated the facts. They changed it back into my name.

I think Utility needs better computer programs that won’t develop Evil AI that arbitrarily makes us Meat People suffer apoplexy and incontinence. For a few minutes there, I thought the management had decided to not renew our lease, after all.

Tuesday, I discover the fieldwork class session is in the summer schedule.

Last night, I discover that only 21 students in my counseling specialty will be in them. We’re sharing with the other counseling types since they won’t allow those fields to have their own fieldwork class.

Priority will be given to those who would have finished in summer, then to those who would have finished in fall, and oy, I do not know how many of those exist. So I may or may not have been saved. I may or may not be able to finish. I have to tell various people what I am doing in the summer to determine work schedule and hours at county mental health, and I can’t.

WHY are they picking on the counseling program? Social work is still going strong, as are the teachers and the business students.

I want to kick someone.