This Whole World Shines So Brightly

Working through my homework. Annoyed with the textbook ridden with spelling/grammar/punctuation errors and the professor who wants us to interact via discussion board and goes on and on with instructions but never tells us what she actually wants and hasn't graded anything I've submitted in two weeks...

It's been a busy as hell week. Did I mention the kitten? *checks* Yes. Ok, we're probably not going to keep him. I can't afford him and roomie doesn't want another cat in the house. He's still pretty frikken adorable.

( thoughts on Torchwood: Children of Earth )

( And Harper's Island finale )

And once again, I have spent way too much time at the coffee shop today. Told Mark I'd come to the bar tonight and he's already been there for an hour and a half and I really can't stay late because I have class in the morning (we did lunges on Friday and my legs and butt are killing me). Had a cheese panini, which was awesome -- btw, I was watching The Next Food Network Star earlier, and they were challenged to make kid food more adult and the team that had grilled cheese sandwiches totally should have made a cheese panini and they didn't. I was very disappointed.

Got my summer financial aid last week. Bought new tennis shoes because my old pair are worn the fuck out (the soles are almost worn entirely away or are falling off in places). The new pair were the only ones my size at Target and they are black and pink and white and horribly comfortable. For great yay.

Also dyed my hair today. It's a little bit darker than I was going for, but it looks good, I think. Will probably lighten in time anyway. We'll see.

yet more on the subject of women are not objects and men need to learn to fucking control themselves. (I totally mean tto reply to those comments, but the whole lack of internet at home/shit ton of homework thing...)

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I am officially signed up for my classes next fall. I'm gonna be BUSY. But what else is new? Trying to get a before/after school job, cause that's apparently the only thing I'll be able to manage. We'll see.

In the mean time, the plan to work my ass off over the summer and build up some savings didn't seem to be going anywhere, but there's a new scheme coming into play this weekend at work that could mean about 40 hours a week for me and I won't have to share my tips and I don't have to spend my entire shift in the store. We're going to start delivering. I'm going to be a froyo courier. Should be interesting. *knock wood*

Also, Fiddler runs next week, Wicked starts at the end of the month and runs the entirety of August, and I'm supposedly going to be helping out in the flower shop at least twice a month until October. So. Hopefully some savings will happen.

Have not seen Torchwood yet.

Oh, and we have yet another cat in the house. Roomie's coworker rescued him but couldn't keep him because her family's allergic. Roomie said we'd hold on to him til we could find a home for him. He is tiny and adorable and I think I'm in love. We're probably going to keep him... I guess we're officially crazy cat ladies.

Do not want to go to work. Supposed to post two more responses on my class discussion boards, but I just can't find any posts I feel capable of contributing to because everything has already been said, except for the one post that's WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS AND BADLY



SPACED. That one I offered some html codes to, but I don't think that counts as a good contribution to the discussion... *sigh*

Except for the fact that I have to be at work in less than an hour, I'm trying to endeavor to figure out my financial aid for next semester and find a job that I can actually work at when I'm pretty much going to be in class 11:00am to 2:00pm and three hours out of every night of the week... ugh.

Dear Trek fans,

You know... when you refer to New Trek as simply "Reboot", it really confuses those of us who are fans of (Mainframe Entertainment's) ReBoot. Just sayin'...

Love,
Me.

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There is a general sense of "oh my god, what am I doing?" but actually, things are going pretty well, except for the lack of internet at home, which makes keeping up with what's going on and getting my homework in on time a little more difficult than usual... Hrm...

lack of internet at home making me crazy, plus hafta focus almost entirely on schoolwork when I do have access. :(

So much YES to this post.

Here's the thing. I have plenty of awesome guy friends. I trust them and feel safe and comfortable with them. The majority of the time, I feel perfectly safe walking around my neighborhood, no matter the time. But there's always the lingering memory of the guy who I called a friend and who decided that because he'd worn me down into accepting the things he bought for me, because I was a girl and he was who he was, we couldn't just be friends like I wanted to be, he was entitled to me, and became rude and unaccepting when I repeatedly told him I was not only not interested in him romantically, and that I was seeing someone else. I should not feel guilty for that, but a year later, I still do a little bit. There are still the occasional weirdos who make catcalls at me as I'm walking home, and I want to scream at them "What would your mother think?!" My best friend has recently been in a situation that honestly makes me want to drive to Las Cruces and gut the boys involved, but that's her story to tell, not mine -- the point is that it stems from the same ideas discussed here, and it makes me sick that she has to deal with it before she can get her degree and get the fuck out of there.

So. I'm going to a charity screening of Serenity for Equality Now tonight; it's sort of unrelated, I was planning to anyway, and then I read that post just now and needed to say something. So. Yeah. People need to stop being dumbasses when it comes to treating women like people vs. property.

No internet at home. Need to just break down and buy my own, stop pirating off neighbors. Except, I'm not even sure how I'm gonna pay my rent this month 'cause after I took a week off for my wisdom teeth, I didn't get scheduled again until the day after tomorrow. Effectively, I'm getting two weeks off. And then there's the all my other bills. Somewhat annoyed about this whole thing. Desperately need a new job, except I'm apparently completely unhirable, why do I even try, gr arg.

*head desk*

Been sleeping too much this week. Annoyed in general with dumb people, who are apparently, everywhere.

Summer classes start on Monday. Dropped Math class. Financial Aid dropped from over $1000 to around $800. Bleh.

Possibly the geekiest damn thing I have ever seen. And I read Lostpedia.

Recovering from the extraction. Went in for my post-op yesterday, dentist said I'm healing up surprisingly well, considering it was actually an incredibly difficult extraction (left lower, the one that hurt the most, turned out to be at a weird angle that they couldn't tell from the x-rays; it's the only one that still hurts, unless I touch any of them, but it hurts much less). He took my stitches out and told me to keep rinsing with salt water, keep taking my antibiotics, and take ibuprofen until next week, and then I should be good. Yay.

Mark came over last night. He brought me a present, he said because I looked so sad and pathetic on Saturday. He kept doing that annoying thing people do where they giggle about how awesome the present is but won't tell what it is, and he was like, "You have to open it in your room."

He got me Twilight Princess. :D :D :D I've played it once before, but I've been wanting to play it again so bad for a long, long time. Every time we go into EB, I look at sadly at the used games and lament the used version being only $10 less than the new one, and I just can't justify $34 on a game right now... And I guess he's had a couple really good weeks at work and was feeling bad for me all laid up with puffy face and jaw pain. We started playing around 6pm (well, I played, he watched), took a couple of breaks to eat and go buy juice and watch the Chuck finale (he was kind of behind, and I made him promise he'd watch it with me cause I HAD to see the look on his face at certain key moments in the last two eps), and ended up being forced to quit by exhaustion around 4am. :D I has a good boy.

So now I have one save file for when he's over, so he can see the game, and one save file to play at my leisure, cause there's no way I'm only playing when he's here. ;p

Also, rewatching Lost. Almost done with season two. Ahh, it's so good.

Aaaand, yeah. More randomness forthcoming, I'm sure.

Got my grades for the spring semester. Kind of surprised.

Principles of Infant/Toddler Caregiving: A (Totally thought I was going to get a B)
Math: B (Woohoo! I passed!)
Voice: B (Only one that was what I expected)
Human Growth and Development: C (?!? I only missed one assignment, and it wasn't even a big one! I got full marks on the paper [that I thought was crap] and all the discussion board questions, and I never got less than 8/10 on the quizzes, in fact the majority if them were 10/10! I was sure I'd at least get a B...)

So. Got my teeth out this morning. Procedure ended up not being nearly as bad as I was dreading. Took some valium last night and again an hour before my appointment, then they gave me... something else when I got there, had to let it dissolve under my tongue. They let me listen to my iPod throughout, and they gave me a blanket (which they let me keep; it's soft and fuzzy and blue), a TON of novacain, and, of course, nitrous. It didn't seem like it took very long, but it was actually about three hours. Mark stayed over last night (we went to see Up first; it was awesome. I cried. You'll see why when you see it.), and came with me to the dentist and brought me home after. He tucked me in and put in Star Wars for me to watch, but I fell asleep within the first fifteen minutes. Spent most of today asleep, having some really fucked up dreams, waking up just to take my antibiotics and vicoden. Now the swelling's gone down a ton and the bleeding seems to have stopped. I've only thrown up once, a little while after my third dose of meds, so Roomie made me some cold peppermint tea. Haven't eaten anything else today, but I'm about half done with the tea, and when I finish that, I think I'll have some pudding or apple sauce. My mouth feels weird, and the lower left hurts more than the rest, but I'm glad it's over with, and I really hope this will lead to less random mouth pain, after I'm all healed up.

New battery in car. Car is running better than before. Apparently old battery was ancient.

So, in yet more news of the "my car actually sucks" variety, last Wednesday the battery died just as I was getting off the on-ramp to school. When I had a test. There ensued half an hour of very kind people helping me move my car and give it a jump, and my professor very nicely let me take the test even though I was so late. After class I had to get another jump, and I drove it home very carefully. When I got home, I turned the car on and off a couple times, stalled the engine a few times, and it ran fine. I left it sitting for a few days anyway, but yesterday it started up fine and ran. Not so this morning. Battery once again dead. I figured if I could get my battery charged enough, I could take it over to Autozone tomorrow and have them help me out. Roomie is in Australia, but she left her car key in the fridge; I didn't think she'd mind if I took her car out just to jump mine.

Apparently I put the cables on wrong. There were sparks. And then the cables caught fire. A neighbor helped me put the fire out and recommended I call a towing company to remove the melted cables and see if the cars would start. I was very, very worried that I'd killed Roomie's car in addition to my own.

Towing guy came, took the cables off, Roomie's car runs fine. My battery is done. He charged it enough for me to move it into the driveway by my house (rather than on the street, where I usually park), but the battery died again before I could get it properly parked, so I'm all in the sidewalk. Goddamn. And, he charged $140, just to do all that, no towing involved. Good god!

I knew owning a car was really more trouble than it's worth, but jesus. What else can go wronge? *knocks wood*

And I am officially done with the semester. Got full credit on the paper. Feel pretty confident about the voice and child development finals, not so much about the math. Hoping I feel worse about the math than I actually did...

Been working a lot this week. Hoping to get a few extra hours next week, before the extraction. At the moment I'm scheduled to not work at all for the week following and on the one hand I'm like "oh god, I do not want to do this" but I'm also like "hey, finally, a week where I don't have to do anything!" except I'll spend most of it in pain...

Supposedly getting a raise and retroactive payment from both jobs sometime soon, but today was payday and neither of them contained raise or retro. *sigh*

Called the Y to check in this morning, I know they called at least one of my references shortly thereafter. Hoping. Waiting drives me nuts though.

Not sure what to do with myself now that I don't have any homework that Must Be Done. Have a vague idea that I could watch some tv or play video games or something, but all my shows are finaled out...

Probably aught to eat something, but all I want to eat right now is junk. Seriously. I have a powerful craving for cheetos and little debbie snack cakes. Idk.

Blaaah.

Not making progress on my paper. Well, doing research, but given how much time I don't have, I need to move past research stage fairly soon. Ahh, finals week(s).

No word from the Y yet, but I called and left a message with one of the interviewers, thanking her for seeing me and providing a further reference. So, here's hoping. *crosses fingers*

Of course, if I do get the job, summer's going to end up being a lot busier than I'd planned. That's probably for the best though... We'll see.

Last meeting before finals of one of my classes today. Think I will try to take another class with this prof. in the fall. She's cool. The main thing this class has shown me is how unprepared I feel to be making lesson plans, even though I actually do know what I'm doing. I've done it before with KinderCamp, and a little bit with Production Camp, but I very often feel at a complete loss when I imagine doing it elsewhere. Probably because I don't know the material for those places as well. *shrug* Hopefully I can convince myself that I am competent.

The class I assisted in today was... odd. I'd heard about this group of kids before, and they didn't seem as entirely out of control as others had described, but they were definitely wild. Very excitable, and the second one kid lost interest, the rest of them were gone. Apparently I was brought in to try and curb this. I tried, but it was very tough going. Next week we're going to try dividing the group into two smaller groups, and see if that helps. Also, try to get them out of that insanely hot classroom. I think the major problem I saw was that the Lead was so frazzled that she'd kind of given up on trying to get through to them; she also seemed to be forgetting to actually explain what she wanted of them, but they weren't really giving her a chance to. I'll have to think about this. I really hope dividing the group will help...

Interview seemed like it went really well. *prays* That would a sweet gig, if I can get it.

Car is fixed! :D They even threw in new timing, drive, and fan belts for the price of just the water pump replacement. It is awesome to have a car I'm not worried is going to explode every time I turn it on.

Not terribly impressed with this production of Butterfly, but the kid playing Dolor is cute.

Definitely should go to bed now.

Desiree has posted photos from the last few shindigs! Check out me and Frankie climbing rocks at the Marian Call party! ;p

ok, so that paper I said was due on the 23rd? due on the 17th. *headdesk* I'm basicly working all week, and I have stuff due pretty much every day.

More for my reference than anyone else's:
Tomorrow
8am - Voice class
9:35 am - Math
1pm - YMCA interview
5:30pm - Ushering Madama Butterfly

somewhere in there I need to go to the library and look at toddler books for the weekly lesson plan due on Wednesday, and hopefully pick up my car from the mechanic (where I left it this morning).

Wednesday
9am - Child Development
12:30pm - Assisting Life+Play class

after that, need to do Math homework. Most likely this will be when I have the most opportunity to work on the paper, as well.

Thursday
8am - Voice class
9:35 am - Math
12:30pm - Pinkberry (done at 4:30pm)
8pm - (hopefully, haven't completely decided yet) Jonathan Coulton concert

must also make a cake and work on paper.

Friday
10am - Pinkberry
6:30pm - Butterfly
Whenever I get off from Butterfly - Pete's going away party at Todd's (need cake for this).

Most likely will not get any homework done on this day.

Saturday
Currently scheduled to open at Pinkberry; trying to get it off, not only so I can be hung over, but also so I'll have one day with no work of any kind, and so I can hopefully work on my paper. W said he'd trade shifts with me if nothing else came up, but I'm really hoping he'll be able to cover me and M can cover him. We'll see.

Sunday
12:30pm - Butterfly

Paper is due that night, the following week is finals.

Blaaah. Looking forward to this semester being over.

Bear with me, there is no coordination to the following thoughts. It's been a while since I've felt so compelled to brain dump...

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out on the 30th. This is something I have been terrified of since I saw my parents get theirs out when I was wee. I am not looking forward to it. At all. Coworkers have not helped allay these fears; Shift Lead N, who is studying to be a nurse, has this idea that they can't take out all four at once without seriously messing up the nerves in my jaw. Coworker C and Shift Lead D started describing it; I nearly blacked out and lost some sleep thinking about it. Manager was nice about it; he just got his out a couple months ago and recommended taking everything they give me and not trying to be a punk about it (no way; I will take all available drugs), and to ask for the week off but call as soon as I feel able to work. Mark has promised to nanny me afterward, and Mum says she's trying to figure out if she can be here then. Dad sent me money for the copay (as well as to fix my car, will try to do that this week). I have twenty more days to try not to freak out about it.

Two more weeks left in school. I have a paper due in Child Development on the 23rd which I haven't begun work on yet. My final song is due this Tuesday, and I need to watch a video of and write a report on my last performance before then. I know my song needs work; I can't seem to nail the tempo, it goes all over the place. Just had our last math test before the final, think I did ok, still feel like I need to schedule some time for intensive studying before the final, but I think (I hope, I pray) I'm going to pass. Have a weekly lesson plan for toddler's due in the curriculum planning class. Think when this semester is over, I will miss the professor for that class most; she is fun and smart and obviously passionate about her career.

Have been ushering Tuna Does Vegas all weekend, Madama Butterfly is coming up on Tuesday. Last night I randomly went to see Wolverine with Sha, Anurra, Sierra, Brian, and Sarah; I'd already seen it at midnight last week with Mark and one of his Daves, but I thought it was worth seeing again. Sha and Anurra did not share this view; I told them that the way to enjoy these films is to go in expecting explosions and violence, perhaps the occasional motorcycle and gun fight, and maybe some naked Hugh Jackman, but they wanted plot coherence and adherence to the comic book canon. Le sigh. Also, we totally had the cast for a teen movie crammed into Anurra's car (two white chicks [me and Sierra], a white guy who could be Jewish [Sha's actually Persian, but what do film people care?], an Asian guy [Anurra], a black guy [Brian], and hispanic girl [Sarah]).

Ran into Ally yesterday. Should really make an effort to get back in touch... Also need to hang out with Chelsea more. And see if Elizabeth is ok...

Haven't seen Star Trek yet. Really want to, but don't know when I'll get the chance.

Saw tammypierce's new book at the store yesterday too. Probly startled Sha squealing over it. Had to resist the urge to buy it on the spot. Must wait at least until after finals. Hopefully library has a copy... Mustn't be buying non school books right now...

Hope my books are resellable. Tried to take care of them, but apparently my backpack is not the best place for books; they tend to get bent. Also, Niki the cat knocked a glass of water over on my math book.

Speaking of, Niki, Camille, and Serenity have taken over my bed. Serenity is watching me like "What the fuck are you doing crazy lady?" but the other two are sleeping. They will not be happy when I decide I want to use my bed.

This week I'm beginning assisting two classes for Life+Play. One is only two weeks, Monday afternoons helping Anu with her French Immersion class; Christine said it's pretty simple, just be another body to supervise, since I don't know any French and speaking in English will just throw everything off... The other class is eight weeks on Wednesday afternoons, and that should be a little more involved. Haven't really worked with Cindy before; she's nice though, so I hope this works out. Definitely need the money...

Interviewing for one of they YMCA summer camps on Tuesday. Have to keep reminding myself of that. Also have a ton of applications to put in elsewhere... I'm kind of conflicted about this looking for another job thing now; obviously, I'm fed up with the yogurt, but I'm getting benefits (hello wisdom tooth extraction in twenty days!). But I was supposed to get a raise in January and it hasn't kicked in yet, and honestly, I want to be teaching, not explaining the intricacies of frozen yogurt to confused tourists. There's also the issue of how apparently I'm the only team member who ever puts forth any kind of effort to keep the store clean, and that is driving me nuts. Someone the other day actually made fun of me for "cleaning the same spot over and over again" while she was spending the whole day sitting on the trash can and not lifting a finger to clean up after herself. I wanted to slap her. But I'm also... well, comfortable's not quite the word, but it's going to have to do. And I know that, excepting ComicCon, I can pretty much tell Manager when I can and can't work and he's cool with that, which makes school a lot easier.

I'm signed up for four summer classes, but I'm thinking about dropping one of them (have I actually posted this section before? I know I've drafted it, but I don't think it's actually gone up...). Right now I'm signed up for two core classes I need to get out of the way (health and PE) so I can focus on major classes, a class that contributes to the childcare major but isn't required, and the next math class in the series. Technically, I only need the math if I decide to transfer to a university or if I take some time off after next year, but... I feel like it needs to be done. The only class I'm taking in person is PE, the other three are online. It seems like a good line up, but I'm worried I'll be really stressed during the summer... Nevermind the potential crazy of the next two years, if Mesa will let me sign up for the conservatory (they might not since I already took all those theatre classes at UTEP...).

I really hope Haydee needs a ton of help at the flower shop during the summer... I really liked helping them out last fall. ...Summer is going to be nuts between classes and Con and Fiddler and Wicked, but I'd rather be teaching and making flower arrangements than making yogurt.

I'm also thinking about making baby toys to sell on Etsy. I made a ball for one of my projects in the curriculum class and my professor loved it and I think it turned out pretty well, and now I have all this left over material and batting... Dunno what'd be right to charge though, and would anyone buy?

I need to move my car to the other side of the street so I don't get a ticket from the street sweepers in the morning...