I've spent today doing absolutely nothing of use. ( more on this topic )

I've also been writing intermittently, so I now have a jumbled folder of half-finished stories and letters to various people. I think my favorite of the bunch starts with, "I thank you." The only one that's giving me fits is saved as "plz be over thx.txt", which, of course, pretty much summarizes how I feel about that particular story at the moment. Gah. However, I've discovered the crack that is writing "Things that Never Happened" fics, and have since created extensive lists for a rather alarming number of characters from all sorts of universes, so I'll probably be content for a good long while just generating random deviations from canon.

^{* A major bit of blasphemy here: AniTV? Is seriously not that bad. There are certain aspects of it that just suck, but I actually really like the overall sense of the story that the episodes conveyed.}

I just got back from California, I have Chinese food and ice cream, and I got confirmation that I didn't fail any classes. Therefore, you get stories.

( They have *trolleys*! )

It's so weird to be back in Madison now, hum-dum, life as usual. I might even have to go to work on Monday - I forget if I asked for it off. Man. I've got a pile of Zoo stuff (I totally fell in love), a tan that is now completely out of place, and a suitcase of dirty clothes to wash, but other than that...wow. I was bobbing around in the biggest body of water on this planet a couple of days ago, and now it's back to work and school and everything.

But first, I'm goin' to bed. (Or maybe I'll catch up on LJ. The drama can certainly build up, can't it?)

In my history class today, the professor was talking about plastic surgery.

I hate that everyone makes a joke out of plastic surgery, I really do. I mean, okay, maybe there is someone, somewhere who just does it for the sake of getting it done. Maybe. Maybe they just decide one day, oh, wouldn't it be nice to be anesthetized so I can be cut open and re-formed! I can spend months healing, maybe have weird scars, have to deal with huge medical bills...sounds fun to me, let's go! It's a possibility, I guess. But for most people, I'm betting, the decision is a little bit more thought out. And that he insisted upon giggling over the idea of people who just decide they want bigger breasts calling up their plastic surgeon and arranging an appointment really friggin' irritated me.

( I ramble, I ramble, I ramble. And then I decide I need a Footnote. )

So, yeah, once again: Fuck off, Tom, and I hope one of your essay questions ends up being about plastic surgery, just so I can properly pound it into your head that snickering about transvestites for the better part of an hour in lieu of intelligent coursework is just Not Cool.

I've read a business book.

Well, no. I've read two business books. But the first doesn't count because the guy who wrote it is completely hilarious and says stuff like, "Face it: all of this is your own goddamned fault." The second, on the other hand, was written by David Allen.

( I has a list )

Carer-of-Mice wrote back in a positive manner, which is cool. It's been a bit since I e-mailed him, but, heck, I'm not one to throw stones about a lost week here or there. I'm glad to hear from him – now I just have to compose a letter that steps down from the über-formal tone I used without dropping straight to "Hi!" (his greeting).

.

( (Oh, and requisite whining: Papers I have to write!): )

.

I may be completely alone in my hatred of writing assignments.

I'm good at them; I tend to get decent grades, anyway. I even like to write, in general. But I abhor writing assignments because, on the vast majority of possible topics, I have absolutely nothing to add to the discussion. I understand that no one is really looking for me to add something – most of the time, teachers just want a summary of research, or maybe just readings – but I feel that there's no point in me sitting down and writing unless I actually have something to say. And that is how I average 30 000+ words over the course of any given month – writing about topics I feel I can actually add something to. But BRECHT, for god's sake? What can I possibly say about Bertolt Brecht that hasn't been said a dozen times before? I'm not going to have some great and cosmic insight into his work’s inner soul. I'm just not. Especially not on the basis of an abridged version of one of his short stories.

So, yeah. Although it’s not due for a while, I think I'll mess around with the Qwghlm article first, because it's kinda fun and I get to poke at all of the foreign-exchange organizations' lofty goals. The person coordinating the project might shoot me down when I turn in the abstract, but, eh, that's the future.

.

Oh, and question: what does it mean when a credit reporting bureau just won't report on your credit history? I don't get it, and Google is being rather unhelpful, though I'm probably just asking the wrong question. But why would a company whose stated purpose is to report credit history (which I have) just refuse to cooperate?

For what it's worth, I think the "Orange and Maroon Effect" idea is brilliant. I'll be somewhat hard-pressed to find actual clothing in those colors, but we'll see.

They're holding a memorial later today. There's a tower on campus; they'll be ringing the bells at eleven. I don't know how that's supposed to correspond with classes - one of mine starts at 10:55, but I'm guessing no one will object to people being late.

I understand completely about not wanting to wait until next year. I even understand that maybe even Monday was too long to wait to give people a public memorial. But the 20th is already...I hate to sound so callous, but, yeah. Oklahoma City. Littleton. So much remembered grief is already tied to this day that it seems almost more hurtful to pick it than to have chosen sometime later, but more innocuous.

But that's alright. That's something we can talk about later.



(In the meanwhile: happy birthday to me, and felinephoenix, and my grandma, and everyone else!)

"'We always joked we were just waiting for him to do something, waiting to hear about something he did,' another classmate, Stephanie Derry, told The Associated Press." (NY Times)

Everything I would say about Virginia Tech has, in general, been said. But that...god, that's terrible. Not that she said it, because she's just being honest, but that it could be said. By the sounds of it, only the gunman himself knew if his timing was important, but that quotation just makes me shudder. It's not the only such statement in that article, either. Christ. We joke about such things to make ourselves feel better, but the jokes aren't supposed to come real.

Be brave?





Have been writing again. Results are interesting. Will post eventually.

Oh, man - I've been preparing financial aid stuff for the past hour. That said, while tedious, this process isn't nearly as daunting as I believed...but FAFSA, grr. Apparently something in my application made someone suspicious, and now the school needs a bazillion forms filled in, including a complete copy of my tax return. Good news is, though, my EFC is at zero. If nothing happens to change that, I will be a very happy person.

This is the first year I've filed taxes, though, so I'm really glad it's gone smoothly thus far and it's the school that wants to audit me, not the IRS - thank you, HR Block! I am utterly in love with their online filing system.

...Oh, and I didn't mention, but – the German presentation? They hated my part of it, as I rather expected. No one cared about any of what I did talk about (Diaspora! East v. West! Lingering censorship issues!), and everything I mentioned a nice little aside turned out to be someone's one true love in German music. Gah. Who knew so many prissy college kids would be so into German hip-hop? (And WHY was it so very bad of me to describe it as "angry"? It (frequently) IS, for the love of God. "Kill all the damned-fucked foreigners!" and associated lyrics are not the words of happy, well-balanced people I’m interested in supporting!)

...even if it's just my particular brand of low-key decision-making.

End of May, I'm going to San Diego with my mother -- and the "with my mother" part is largely incidental, since she's got business-y plans for the entire week, which leaves me rubbing my hands gleefully. I'm currently Googling voraciously for ideas on where to go and what to see.

( happy babbling )

But, anyway, I've never been anywhere near the west coast - you can't tell at all, can you? - so it'll be cool.

^{[1] Wikipedia says!}


Short aside: Sie sagte, sie liebe ihn nicht mehr; er hat aber immer noch Hoffnung, egal was das heißt. (Aber hallo, Freundchen.)

Well, just shot off a resume (in PDF format, is that bad for some reason?) to a professor looking for a Carer of Mice. That's totally what the job description says, and though I had to laugh at myself while I was being all, "My l33t skillz do indeed qualify me to watch your mice! Plz write back!" it really pleases me that he wrote it up that way. And I would take care of his micies very well. So we'll see if anything comes of that. (It's the first official application I've put out since I started at Kinko's, so I'm feeling kind of sneaky about it.)

I've also changed my major. I was in genetics, but now it's "Wildlife Ecology (International Agriculture and Natural Resources)". I know, I know; the parentheses bother me, too. But the good outweighs them, because this might just mean I get to be happy.

( in which I rant a bit )

So, to summarize, the new major makes today cool, even if nothing comes of the job thing. I do like the Undergrad Genetics Club – who wouldn't like people whose motto is, "Sex is Good"? – and will probably continue to go to the general meetings, but I'm glad to be out of it as a major.

That's the advertising campaign the company I work for is currently running. It's kinda neat in that we have coffee-pot-shaped fliers for it. Other than that, though, it's a bit weak because no one seriously pulls an all-nighter for anything that they could pay someone else to do, unless said payment would be unethical.

I mention this all because I'm pulling an all-nighter today in a last desperate attempt to (a) prepare a presentation for my German class at eleven and (b) write a five-page paper for my history class at three. I had planned to do this all a week ago, over Spring Break, but I was sick to the point of not being able to stand upright and therefore didn't accomplish much at all. Being able to send these jobs to Kinko's would be a serious relief but, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. I probably will swing by there at some point this morning to get everything I do manage to get done printed. But for now I'm goofing around online, happy in the little den I've made for myself.

( school-stuff )

In other news, I'm looking for a new job. Kinko's is pretty okay, over all, but it's eating me alive. ( job-stuff )

And, with any luck, this has all succeeded in distracting you thoroughly from my complete and utter disappearance back shortly after I started with that crazy company. ( :)? ) I've missed you all (but wouldn't blame you a bit if you never happened to read this) and LJ's general screwiness -- but, good god, now it's four in the morning and I really do have to get something done!

Okay, life-post. Long post, at that.

Life is crazy. I enjoy each part of it - sleeping, working, schooling - but all of them combined, and draped over the chancy beast that is the Madison busing system to boot, make for a chaotic world.

( today )

Anyway.

( copy wench? )

And that's quite enough from me. I really will stop ignoring everyone once life settles back into something resembling sanity - supposedly, I have great big holes in my schedule during which I could be doing things other than the big three, but in practice, it doesn't really work that way, or at least hasn't been these past few weeks. I'm not failing anything, though, so that's a plus.

It feels like Thursday, but that's never stopped it from being Tuesday before, so I suppose my hope that I'll wake up tomorrow and find that it's Friday is in vain. And, wow, a lot of people on LiveJournal had a lot of stuff to say today. The prospect of hanging out online is infinitely more attractive than doing yet more schoolwork - I've been at life since about five this morning, after a whopping four hours of sleep, so I'm getting kind of tired of the whole situation - but the priorities list demands otherwise so as to avoid a repetition of my marathon reading of three textbook chapters, two appendices, and four articles in two hours and one cup of coffee. Y'all may read an article from my anthropology class here, if you'd like - the others weren't nearly as amusing, and are in protected directories, besides.

Speaking of anthropology, I love that I go from a class that could - and perhaps ought to - be titled "Religion as Western Politics" (or some such thing) to my anthropology class, in which the instructor makes statements like, "Eh...people say a lot of stuff is about religion, but it's really not. That's a gross oversimplification. Saying someone in Ireland is Protestant or a Catholic in the Balkans is just shorthand for the vast realm of political beliefs that individual probably holds." I doubt that either view is completely correct - and the one that discounts religion almost entirely bothers me, as a hell of a lot of people involved in both examples seem to think it's at least partially about religion - but it amuses me to imagine the two professors trying to have a discussion about, well, anything.

Also, for the sociology majors stationed in the library who seem strangely reluctant to shut up and read a book: it's "Balkanize" (or "Balkanise", I suppose), not "Vulcanize". You are making yourselves look silly by failing to comprehend the difference between polymer chemistry and politics, and those of us who regularly use both terms are indeed laughing at you - not with you - when you continue to use the wrong word after having seen maps labeled "The Balkans" and having had the term explained to you several times. Please stop before someone herniates something by trying not to laugh too loudly.

My schedule is insane, have I mentioned that? I start at Kinko's/FedEx this afternoon and will be skipping my French class to do so - I had intended to go to the morning session to make up for that, but failed to take into account that going in for an 8:30 class instead of my usual 9:30 Calc would mean getting up an hour earlier. At about ten after eight, I remembered my good intentions, but there didn't seem to be any point by then. Ah, well - I'll go twice tomorrow if I'm not completely exhausted from today, on the off-chance that the morning group is slightly behind the afternoon.

Oh, and work? Is going to kill me. I seriously need to just spend a day going over old Calc stuff - skipping a semester in between I and II is not a good plan - but every time I try, I realize that I can't do that because there's English and anthropology and the terrific but work-intensive "Making of Modern Europe" class. And life looks so innocent planned out on paper - I have all kinds of holes in my schedule for studying and whatnot, but they tend to get eaten by homework.

I may end up dropping the English class. Every semester, I say that about one class or another and I've yet to actually do it, but I might. The instructor is demanding and bitchy, he refuses to entertain any views other than his own, and he's assigning more stuff than I have for Calc and the Black Plague class combined - which is almost impressive. However, he hasn't objected to me turning in answers with reference to alien attacks or homosexual zombies, which makes me inclined to believe that he's cool enough to hang on to for a semester. Anyway, about 65% of the class just didn't show up for the second session and I fully expect another third to disappear, so maybe the whole off-putting personality is intended to drive people away, in which case I'm inclined to stick with it out of stubbornness.

Okay, felinephoenix, you win: I got the response from the FAFSA people and am now properly disillusioned. I also think the EFC is randomly generated.

Other than that, school was actually fun. I liked the instructors I met, though I wish they'd've picked cheaper books. (Except, I'm taking a French class - Spanish was full - and lasted a grand total of seven minutes before slipping into German when I wanted to say something - "Ach, so", I think it was. Whoops.)

Repressed rage, much? My mother called me this evening:

( and people wonder where I get it from )


In other news, I've gone from, "Whee, school starts tomorrow!" to "School starts tomorrow and I have Calc II at nine-thirty in the morning and I'm going to fail - he's going to ask me to integrate something and I'll say, 'Uhm...integrate? With f-of-x? Wait, what?' and then we'll do a placement test and I'll fail it and he'll wonder if I didn't crack the school's database to change my last grade to an A, which isn't far wrong because I probably only got it because Rothe loved me so, and all I really remember is that you use the 'washer method' if there's hole in the shape and the 'disc method' otherwise, but then there was something about the directions the rectangle-strips went in, and that's not even thinking about the water-pressure problems, not to mention the density calculations for point-of-balance, and, my god, I'm going to fail!" in about twelve hours. This amuses me, though, because I could almost watch it happening, and even now with part of my mind panicking about all of the stuff I've forgotten or never properly understood in the first place, another large part is saying, "Pfft, there'll be a hundred people there, no one's gonna care if you can calculate slope, let alone know the equation for the pressure on a round submarine window, and if they do, just sit somewhere else next time and wear a hat."

And now I need to go to sleep because tomorrow promises to be incredibly busy, although hopefully I'll find time to actually reply to various people.

Okay, objective opinion time. What do the statements, "Okay, so maybe I'd been a little harsh. I'd make it up to [him] later." suggest to you?

(Clearly I've been typing for far too long.)

More seriously, the thing with the drug test is still bothering me. Not immensely or anything, but it keeps coming to mind and making some internal sensor go bleep. I did it today, walked to a clinic downtown and gave them a "sample" and walked back home. It was ridiculously simple. Streamlined. They've done it before, they do it every day, I was in and out in less than five minutes, the test was charged to the company, no problem...and yet I'm left thinking, "Hang on. Civil liberties?"

( related comments )

Ee, I am happy, although I've basically given up any hope of having a life...! I had an interview with a lady from FedEx Kinko's today for a third shift keep-the-store-open kind of position, and it went something like,

"So, why FedEx Kinko's?"
"[insert short spiel about the professionalism, job security, &c.]"
"That's why I like it, too! We also have this great benefits package...[insert long spiel about Blue Cross/Blue Shield (!!) medical plan, paid vacation, six-month raises, &c.]"
"That's really generous - it sounds like a terrific set-up."
"Yeah, it is. So, do you think you'd want to work here?"
"Yes, that'd be great."
"Okay, how's Monday?"

The only less-strenuous interview I've ever had was for the tutoring position at the college, which went,

"Say, Sara, would you be interested in tutoring?"
"Uhm...sure!"

Now all I have to do is not fail the drug test (which is stupid of them to make everyone take, but whatever - they're paying for the test and the school pays for my bus pass, so all I have to do is take a ride to some clinic and pee where I'm told) and I have a decent paying job that doesn't require working odd hours here and there throughout the school day like my last one. Yay, me.

To celebrate this, I bought orange juice (vitamins are my friends...) and roast beef Ramen noodles. How salty twenty-seven-cent noodles count as celebration, I don't know, but they do taste good. As I've just signed myself up for a schedule that goes, "00:00-08:00: work; 09:30-14:00: school; 15:30-23:00: sleep; wash, rinse, repeat" with short breaks for bus rides from one side of town to the other, I figure I should get used to food that can be prepared in three minutes and eaten in two, since my default mode seems to be, "Food? What is this 'food'?"

I turned in a paper to my chemistry professor, once, and he said, upon glancing through it, that he'd give me at least a B just for having formatted it so well. We're not talking the weekly lab report, here - this was the major end-of-term twenty-page report that had been dangling over our heads for the entire semester. At first, I was almost kind of offended - I didn't object to the grade, but I was thinking, "Hang on, that's a couple hundred hours worth of work you're holding there. And it comes down to white-space?"

But I calmed down pretty quickly, fast enough to laugh and thank him. Because who cares why he's giving the grade out, right? If he gives me a D- and then curves the whole thing so I end up with an A, I'm not going to whine about the D- that used to be. The idealist in me says that I'd remember it and try to screw with the curve the next time 'round, but that doesn't matter. It's about letting go of that insistence that people should like your work for the same reasons you liked it.

That can apply to anything, of course, but tonight it applies to résumés (or CVs, really, but I've always used the terms interchangeably, and can't quite get this new definition of "CV" into my head yet) because that's what I've been hacking at.

( there shall be no catch-line. )

And I really need to start sleeping at more reasonable hours. I look back on old journal entries and it's all three in the morning, two in the morning, six in the morning. There's the occasional afternoon one when I was waiting for someone or something and happened to have Internet access, but the majority are around this time in the morning. And I wonder why I'm so tired.

Received tuition bill from school this morning. Just about died of a combination of shock and asphyxiation.

( rambling about price of tuition and stuff )

Anyway. Back to actually getting something done, I suppose.