I blew off all my homework this weekend. I fully intended ot do it Sunday night, but instead I watched the first six episodes of Arrested Devlopment back to back. Hilarious, hilarious show. It reminds me a great deal of The Royal Tenebaums except a little more laugh out load funny.
Anyway, I now realize that was a pretty dumb move because I have to take two tests this coming Saturday. So now I have to devote all my spare moments this week to studying for those tests and fretting about when and how I will complete my big final projects. Every class I'm taking has some large culminating project. This must be some kind of karmic retribution for being dumb enough to take four classes this semester in the first place.
I really wish I could just go to school full time and just concentrate on the work and actually FINISH in a timely manner. It's hard to be peppy about work right now because I have officially been passed over for two promotions in favor of people who are definitely not *more* qualified than me and may actually be *less* qualified than me, simply because they have worked there longer. This, in my opinion, is a lame reason to give someone a promotion. Sheer tenacity does not equal competence. Also, I have been hearing horror stories from my co-workers who have been promised the same things I have and they have not gotten them yet, so what makes me think I will get them? Plus, I see the loan applications that come in, and lots of people who do the same job I do are making almost twice as much ot do that job. Add to all that the fact that I recently got a new supervisor who I don't entirely trust and who definitely lacks the know-how and pull to help me in any meaningful way, and you have MAJOR job dissatisfaction. Thanks to my courses, however, I can describe my dissatsfaction in theoretical terms! Hygiene-motivation theory, anyone?
I've mentally committed myself to seeing how things play out over the next 5-6 months, and if they're not going my way, I'll probably begin to look elsewhere for employment. Or try to convince Todd that it would be better if I took 1.5 years off, finished my degree, and got a much better job as a result. (One hopes.)
In other news, I'm loving The Blind Assassin.
anxiousAn election flashbeck for the ladies of 502C...
Breaking News: Election too close to call, and that's my mom!
I have had to put too many red stickers on my election map, so I'm going to bed:(
I battled the demons of non-motivation and utter disdain for assigned subject matter and finished my case analysis about Toys 'R' Us and Amazon.com. Hooray!
Now I just need to do my accounting homework for the week, which is surprisingly light, and then study for two exams that I have to take next weekend. I am utterly tired all the time, but at least the midterm season is making me feel like there is a light at the end of the semester-tunnel. I don't know if it's that my classes are mostly boring this time or if I'm taking too many of them or what, but I am totally having flashbacks to high school when I could not bring myself it finish anything, up to and including papers on the United States' annexing of Hawaii! (I hereby invite all of you privy to that little skeleton in my academic closet to come forward and chide me about it at this time.)
I'm really having a problem with my fingernails being too long, which is a problem I never thought I'd have, since I was/am an inveterate biter of fingernails (my own, that is). I seem to have outgrown that, but now I am woefully unschooled in the care and upkeep of fingernails!
My book club is reading _The Blind Assassin_ by Margaret Atwood. If I can only tear myself away from home improvement shows and other televised goodies, I just might be able to read it with them.
relievedI just publicly accused someone of plagiarism.
My accusation was made all the more salient by the fact that I had used the same source in my own paper, except I had chosen to put quotes around the words which matched the source exactly and give credit to the source in a bibliography.
I am sort of puzzled about how stupid you have to be to attempt plagiarism in a situation where a) the class is held on the internet, b) the entire class is writing on the same topic, and c) the entire class has access to the same internet sources and search engines you do, and therefore is very likely to get the same hits you do when researching the topic.
But other than the puzzlement, I really don't care.
So, about a month and a half ago, I get a collection notice from a utility bill. From, like, 4 years ago. I don't remember the bill, but I remember my circumstances and general attitude toward life and money at that time, so I'm willing to admit the possibility that the bill is legitimate. I call the attorney's office and request a settlement, which I am granted, and we work out a payment schedule. Payments occur, I feel like a responsible adult, end of story.
Until today, when I receive a bizarrely threatening form letter accusing me of failing to pay a "promised amount" by September 11. Except I had never promised to pay anything by September 11, since I made all the necessary payments in August. I call the collection agency, when I really should be relaxing and watching television, since that's what my Monday schedule calls for at 5PM. Some dillweed keeps insisting that: a) I owe an entirely different amount than the promise amount, an amount which when added to my settlement, does not even equal the original collection! b)I have not made any payments that I promised to make, despite the fact that I'm looking at the withdrawals on my bank statement as I'm speaking to him. As I made more of a fuss, he apparently actually read my account history because magically he suddenly knew just what payments I was referring to.
So now I have to prove that I met the terms of the settlement they originally offered me, and I don't even know if that means they're obligated to close the account. I feel like I paid someone hundreds of dollars to harass me, since I'm basically getting the same result as if I had never called them and made payments.
Just when I think I'm clearing things up, you know?
Have any other deadbeats out there, recovering or otherwise, had situations like this? Does the person who owes the debt have any rights in this situation?
I'm supposed to be writing a case analysis right now, but I don't feel like it. I keep telling myself I shouldn't have to write the case analysis because the very case is crumbling as we speak, since Toys "R" Us is going down the tubes. And Amazon.com is totally giving them the brush off. Those tweaky bastards. I don't care, anyway. This whole principles of management thing is so fey. I'd almost like to drop the class, but I'm going to have to take it at some point, and I just took the first exam yesterday, so that point may as well be now. Maybe if I get a lower grade than I expected, I'll drop the class. I am beginning to strongly suspect, at any rate, that I will not find the 4 classes per semester doable, over the long term.
So I'll probably be in college until I'm thirty.
I also took an accounting exam, which was bizarrely long. It also had a weird resemblance to those logic problems where you have to fill in the check marks to figure out what kind of cake Dirk brought to Alice's party and who was he sitting beside? Just in the sense that the majority of the problems were nothing like the homework problems and called upon you, the test taker, to deduce some primary fact (such as the cost of direct materials. I could imagine some less savvy test takers being put off by this, but I think I did well.
I read Daisy Miller today. I liked it, in a semi-allegorical, America v. Europe sort of way. Winterbourne decides he hates Daisy, and poof! she dies. Just like that. Of aptly named "Roman fever", no less. I love my lit class this semester. My teacher looks like a character actor whose name I don't know, but they both speak in the same nasal tones and have wavy gray hair and very similar facial expressions. I think the character actor has played a teacher in one or more teen movies, but I can't think of a particular teen movie, so I can't find out his name and show you all a picture. Anyway, my teacher has a tendency to lecture in a semi-interesting way about a pleasing selection of short stories. This makes him seem more qualified than most of the teachers at the community college.
I'm excited about going to bed because Todd and I bought a tempurpedic mattress topper today!
Ah, friends!
Welcome to the Maharishi School of Management.
I was thinking of deleting this albatross the other day, but the packrat in me loves the idea of all my old dirt out here on the internet. So here I am still. Incidentally, I finally finally went through a large purple bin of artifacts of my young fucked up self. The sheer number of unopened bills in there!! I found some poetry I used to think was great but now I see wasn't. A lot of free postcards picked up on the way out of Tower Records. Some postcards I actually paid good money for--inexplicably. A journal I thought was lost in flames--it just happened to be sort of awesome in its squeamish adolescence.
I threw most of that shit away. I don't have baggage anymore! If I do, at least it doesn't come in a conspicuously-labeled purple tub.
Sometimes I wonder what I thought was so interesting about myself that I kept all this stuff. Now I want to be my own vessel.
Choose a band/or artist and answer only in song TITLES by that band:: The Weakerthans
Are you female or male:: Slips and Tangles
Describe yourself:: Pamphleteer
How do some people feel about you:: Reconstruction Site
How do you feel about yourself:: Uncorrected Proofs
Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend:: Left & Leaving
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend:: My Favorite Chords
Describe where you want to be:: One Great City!
Describe what you want to be:: The Prescience of Dawn
Describe how you live:: Exiles Among You
Describe how you love:: Without Mythologies
Share a few words of wisdom:: This Is A Fire Door Never Leave Open
Some of them are stretchy, but some others worked so well that I couldn't change my pick.
I'm mildly disappointed Donnie isn't online because I wrote 5 poems and I wanted to tell him about it. But I'm telling the LJ instead, which is comparable. Lacks some umph, though.
I'm feeling...gelatinous.
I can't sleep I can't sleep I can't sleep I can't sleep
and now I just have this dull panicked feeling about how difficult tomorrow will be now that I have not gone to bed earlier. And then the next day will be hard and then the next and the next and it just keeps mounting.
I laid down and I thought about yoga and dresses and the movies I watched this weekend (which all turned out to be disturbing on one level or another) and grammar. This went on for over an hour, and I finally got back up.
I read some downright terrible essays about poetry posted by members of my online English course. I am now especially glad that I went ahead and got my required replies out of the way yesterday, so now I am technically not obligated to dwell upon or even read the thoughts of my classmates. I'm sure they have good qualities, my classmates, but I'm glad I don't have to meet them in person and attempt to find them.
All day was sort of a bust, now that I think about it. As far as doing things that I knew needed to get done, that is. The experience of my day was actually quite lovely; I wore pajamas into the midafternoon. That's always a sign of a day well spent, so long as it's not every day. My tiredness is sort of collecting in my spine, right between my shoulder blades. Right there, I feel tired, but it's different. There are too many variations on tired, and right now I require the special sort of tired that makes you fall asleep fast and dream well. I had so many great and strange dreams this weekend! Playing bingo with the old-fashioned bingo cards with the slides to cover the numbers (does anyone else know what I'm talking about?) , and winning and yelling out "Bingo!" Swimming in a lake with my brother-in-law, except occasionally worried about snakes or something in the water. Reading a scrapbook with my stepbrother and discussing incidents that never happened. There were lots of others, but I can't remember them right now. Or they're too complicated to explain.
Maybe now?
| W | Wired |
| I | Influential |
| T | Tempting |
| T | Tender |
| Y | Yum |
| N | Neglected |
| I | Influential |
| G | Great |
| H | Happy |
| T | Trustworthy |
| O | Old |
| W | Warm |
| L | Luscious |
I just downloaded Semagic, and boy, does it look spiffy. Now you may hear from me all the time. Which might be good, except it'll be boring and then you'll hate me. Screw you.
sleepyWhy Today Is Stupid:
--It was at least ninety degrees in my office all day long.
--I was wearing this stupid sweater-with-a-fake-shirt thing that prevented even pushing my sleeves up. (Although it did provide this moment of levity: "Is your sweater with a mock shirt mocking you?")
--Phone tag.
--The Registration Office (as well as many of the other offices) at Tri-C is populated by rude, unhelpful people.
--Today marked the second time in a row I have driven to my stupid, waste-of-time class only to find that it has apparently been permanently canceled. No one was there. I am a loser for not emailing the professor. Excuse me for assuming we'd have class and the professor would teach.
--I have to go to the Lakewood Tax Office on Wednesday. They are trying to tax my minimum wage coffeeshop/video store income, well after the fact. Don't even make me start a list concerning Why RITA Taxes Are Stupid.
--Now I'm cranky and at a loss for what to do with myself. I have a sneaking suspicion I'll end up wasting the rest of the night on the internet.
--My entry won't post!
I forgot how I wanted to post that I had a dream this week that I was engaged to David Foster Wallace. We were in a mobile home (living or just visiting, I don't know) and he was dressed in a professorial tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. DFW (which was what I called him in the dream, by the way) kept having his amorous advances interrupted by a small yapping dog.
I have a lot of plans, and if I don't focus on how long they all are, they all sound quite good.
I found out a lot of good information about community college and costs of education and such, so it looks like I'll be hanging out in Parma a lot the next year. Then I can sally forth the Baldwin-Wallace for some night school and get the college dropout monkey off my back. At least partially on the bank's dime, too!
An grandfatherly type came to our house last night and helped us open an account for retirement. Retirement! Talk about long-term.
Lately I feel that I would like for Todd and me to own a house also. But I think I am partly brainwashed by handling loan applications all day. Their stink is all in my hair and it's affecting my brain. (People have too much money; you can only look at so many mutual fund statements before you begin to feel that perhaps the accumulation of wealth is evil. heh, wouldn't that be a nice marketing plan for the bank?) Other than the brainwashing my new job is nice enough. I get to listen to my iPod most of the day instead of bitchy customers, and there is room for advancement. I am very ambitious of late, and it seems my supervisors have noticed.
I like living in the long-term, for now.
Although I need cigarettes asap, before I become cranky.
I made the woman I've been training to do my old job cry today.
Really. I did. This was the end of her second week; it was her first day flying pretty much solo, and she made what could be considered a fairly serious fuckup, if it were to be repeated time and time again. (And she has been a very frustrating person to train--not quick at all and consistently confused about the same stuff over and over again, but I think I have managed to be patient with her and then just bitch about her to Todd on the way home to get it out of my system) I didn't say anything like, "You idiot!! What can't you do this right?!" but I did stress the importance of the particular task she had neglected to do and gently pointed out that she had had at least half the day to do it. And then she cried. Then Sally, my old boss, noticed that my trainee was visibly upset. So she somehow herded the woman into her office (relieving me of the obligation to comfort her) and they were locked in there the rest of the afternoon. I just can't believe she cried. Never in my adult life have I reduced someone to tears. Not that anything I said was worth crying over; she's just particularly high-strung.
What a crazy start to the weekend.
I'm never online anymore!
Except right now.
Anyway, I'm very busy with school. The classes are insanely easy, but I'm still trying to derive my own kind of enlightenment from the material, which means taking some time with it when possible. There's also loafing about, cleaning my house, and workworkwork. I'm changing to a new department at work at the end of the week, and in a fit of overachieving compulsion, I decided to make sure absolutely everything that could possibly be considered part of my current job is done. As this goal becomes more and more unlikely, I will probably begin to settle for less, but not before I make my own version of Susie's Best Binder Ever.
I have a weird urge to discuss Plato and other philosophies with which I have become more acquainted. Well, a lot of it could just be considered brushing up, although now we're getting into St. Augustine, whom I know next to nothing about. Although, so far, he just inspires me to sit around criticizing Christianity. My philosophy professor reminds me of a turtle. I actually like him a lot, but I can't stop comparing him to a turtle.
Relativism, I also want to talk about. I wrote a clever little essay about it.
Also, I've watched Malcolm X twice in the last two months, so I can sincerely say it's an excellent film that merits multiple viewings.
P.S. Susie, I can't wait till you're in town! This coming week is my "spring break". How dumb is spring break in community college? We all have jobs; it's not like we're running off to Cancun to be on MTv's Beach Party or something.
I have to go to bed, lest I turn into a zombie.
Wanna hear something fucking awesome? I have received an impromptu four-day weekend. We had Friday off, which was supposedly when our things were moved back across the street to the newly-renovated half of the bank. We were supposed to come back today and unpack our cubes and get ready for the return of business as usual tomorrow. i get there, right on time, and discover that they're not finished (which we all guessed they wouldn't be last week) so I got to go back home. I don't even care that I got up before 7 this morning because I had a paper to write and now that's done and I am getting to properly take advantage of a lovely unexpected surprise. I thought I was going to work all day, then come home and wrestle with a vague assignment on the early history of China.
Instead I'm done, and that's frigging spectacular.
The O.C. is handy because it got me listening to lovely little pop-rock band called Rooney. "I've forgot-ten what it feels like to feel normal...to be normal" I wonder how many other extremely suggestible types went out and bought this CD.
I feel so relaxed. Every weekend should be four days long.
Suffice to say, last night's festivities ultimately made my bathroom sorely in need of cleaning. Myk's party was pretty fun, though, and I've had worse hangovers.
Todd's sister Amy had a baby girl today--the first baby of the New Year at that particular hospital! We stopped by, but the little one was too busy having exams and blood tests and such. So we haven't actually met her yet. We did get to peek through the nursery window, though. She has lots of black hair, and she's so long!
Christmas in Virginia was fun. I was having moments before I left where I was really dreading the whole trip. I think I was just really fried from work. I got tons of pajamas and the iPod I've been not-too-subtlely hinting for. Although, I should have done more research because it turns out this old laptop is too old to handle it. So I can't really load it up with music until we get a new computer. Hopefully in the next couple of months. Damn you, Ellen DeGeneres for not giving me the full lowdown!
Finally, some New Years resolutions, most of them made in a rush over breakfast this morning:
-Do well in my classes (starting week after next!)
-Return to my yoga practice (a month off is too long!)
-Help Todd however I can
-Find a good story and tell it
-Cultivate more and better friendships
-Return my severely overdue library book before the library police come looking for me
Okay, that's all. Happy new year, everyone!
This week has been huge. Just huge. I am so tempted to take tomorrow off and do all the shitty little things that need doing around the house, but I have a feeling that will just make this huge week spill over into next week. Maybe it's better just to get this week fucking over with.
First, there's our whole moving mini-saga. In short, we talked about moving to save money on rent and heating bills, started looking at apartments, found a couple of good prospects at the very last minute, and tried to call our landlord to give him the good news. Landlord turned out to be in Vegas, so we enlisted his daughter (our neighbor) to relay the message to him. It all culminates in the landlord tracking us down via our cell phone pretty much as soon as he gets back to Cleveland offering to lower our rent to get us to stay. (Limited time only, not available in Hawaii and Alaska, restrictions apply, but still--he reduced our rent AND he's replacing our windows come summertime. Pretty fucking sweet.) He actually said that he doesn't want us to move out until we purchase our own house. Heh. Thanks for planning our future, Landlord!
I also chose this week to embark on my Tri-C adventure. I went to the campus to register, and they wouldn't let me sign up for the class I wanted because I had not taken freshman comp there. They gave me the number of an english teacher who could give me departmental approval to sign up anyway. I figured I'd fax over my transcripts and that'd be that. I ended up having a fairly amusing phone conversation with the guy. When I told him that I had gone to W&M;, listed a few of the courses I'd taken, and averred that my grades had been "mostly B's," he just chuckled with some remark about a "premier institution" and told me to come pick up the form at my leisure. I should have claimed that I had taken freshman comp at Harvard or something, just for kicks. Anyway, starting in January, I'll be taking Religions of China & Japan, Intro Philosophy, and African American Lit.
Let's not even get into the ongoing work-related trials of training The Girl Who Doesn't Take Notes. I hate seeing all my lovely filing systems disintegrate in her hands. It takes so much sometimes not to just grab everything and say, "Just let me do it, you incompetent!" I just have to remind myself it's not my job anymore and I have new things to file.
Last but not least, with the help of Cindy and Myk, I finally lured Todd out of the house on a weeknight!
I have a sudden desire for a large dry-erase board, on which I might chart out all my mundane complexities. Dry-erase boards are pretty near the pinnacle of office supplies, I think.
Attention, ex- and current Richmonders!
I am going home for Christmas this year, and I should be around town the night before Christmas Eve, which would be Tuesday. Are any of you guys going to be home then? I think we should all hang out, if so.
Actually, we'll also be in Richmond and free on Tuesday during the day. Nothing says it has to be at night.
Comment if you want to do something.
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