happy holidays.
it's not about stress.
it's not about spending.
it's not about out-doing thy neighbor.
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it's not about stress.
it's not about spending.
it's not about out-doing thy neighbor.
our friend A is going to be in town today, and in an effort to make the house presentable, and to prepare for another party we're having next week, i've taken the time to sort/shred/attack paperwork that's been gathering.
in one of the boxes, in one of the piles, i found some photos of when, in 2001, nala went to boston on business, and i followed, later, and we ended up doing some touristy things. nala is looking quite Comic Book Guy-ish, (sadly), and I look greasy and gross, mainly because it was hot, and I was hoofing it most places. but, i set the few good photos from the disposable camera aside to be scanned.
of course, i left them at home. i suck.
if i hadnt had this major project due today, i would've probably decided to take the day off. instead, i go in, and i'm greeted by another emergency... one with yellow green graphics which need to go on the website. a website which wasnt built to play well with yellow green, or graphics with those dimensions.
what are the chances of my getting this done today? slim/none.
what are the chances of getting it done next week? slim/none.
well, i knew it was going to be a busy last couple days in town. i knew it. but, as expected, plans change, and now we're going to dinner with friends from Boston (YAY) instead of my attending an impromptu radio alumni gathering. Unless we all go to dinner at the same restaurant. WHich probably aint gonna happen.
I imagine Annalisa has told her current sig-O about how everything in Ohio is breaded and deep fried. Would you like some bacon with that? Yes, please. Deep fried bacon on a stick. Or bacon wrapped around a deep fried corn dog. MMMMMMmmmm. And don't forget the deep fried cheese. And pickles. Especially the pickles.
Hopefully we can do better than that. Marginally. But we have yet to make a plan. She suggested Macs till I explained teh quality and portion issues. To that she said, "Screw them, then."
As I said to her last night: You can take the girl out of Ohio, but you can't take Ohio out of the girl.
my coworker just brought everyone gift bags full of christmas treats, including 1lb loaf of homemade fruitcake, and a dozen each of bite-sized pecan pies, hershey's kiss peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, and fudge, and a 2lb container of what looks to be that sweet chex mix stuff.
sunday, nala got me on this machine that's supposed to simulate crunches, and all I did was wrench my neck and upper back. i thought i was getting better yesterday, but today i'm worse. i think the positions i sit in at work are not helping. i'll try to stretch out tonight when i get home, and throw some pain cream on it.
ok, almost the same. the cards are down to a small, manageable list now.
i have to pay my car payment. (lunchtime)
i need to run into lowe's. (lunchtime)
i need to frost Lori's cake.
i need to bake cookies.
i need to finish any cards i havent done.
catalog my comics and make a cast-off pile.
clean the kitchen.
clean the living room.
do laundry.
clean the bedroom.
sort receipts.
sort clothes for goodwill.
get passport photo taken.
i've got 50 things to do today, and yet i brought my gym clothes along to work. i'm thinking i'll swing by after work and do some time on the elliptical (ouch) and the treadmill.
i'm finishing up some cards, and dumping those in the mail.
i have to pay my car payment.
i need to run into lowe's.
i need to bake a cake.
i need to bake cookies.
i need to finish any cards i havent done.
catalog my comics and make a cast-off pile.
clean the living room.
do laundry.
clean the bedroom.
sort receipts.
sort clothes for goodwill.
get passport photo taken.
I awoke this morning at 3:00 AM after a horrible Saw-type nightmare which artfully(?) combined buildings from other old dreams of mine with terror, torture, and death. Sickened and out-of-sorts, I awoke to noise from the neighbors, who, having just moved in, decided to party at 3:00 AM.
When you start waking up at 4:30, 3:00 AM is too fucking late. I didnt call the cops since they were all inside (albeit with the windows open), and it was their first night there. And they were partly drowned out by the hum of the humidifier. And Nala continued to snore, and as I couldn't get back to sleep anyway, what did it matter.
I'm debating eating that leftover mushroom dinner again tonight. I don't need another dream like that. Of course, it could've been the combination of the Simpsons stabby-grinches and an earlier discussion which tipped the balance from dream to gore-mare.
Update: Turns out Nala only slept a little longer than I did. *sigh* Good thing I memorized the cops' phone number.
do not make a designer. and look horrible and cheap on serif text.
they make baby Jeebus cry.
grades are in! 2 days late! woohoo!
and, i don't have to pay, AND, i got credit for yet another GEC.
this is me, doing a happy dance.
$1000 less to be in debt.
I only need 6 credits (or less) of Arts and Humanities GECs, and I'll be done, aside from a Contemporary World class. For some reason, one of my classes, which should've counted for those requirements, didn't, but according to the website, it does, so it could be argued. Which would mean, I'd only need a workshop for 1 credit, and Arts & Humanities would be DONE.
the grader (why is there a grader?) was in the hospital this weekend, pushing back grading, and delaying posting grades for another 36 hours or so (from yesterday at 11am). as my boss pointed out, grading a mere 16 final exams per day would've had everything done by Monday, presuming one person graded everything.
so, i checked grades just about every hour once i got home, and again this morning off and on since 6:30am, when online services opened. according to both the web site and our professor, grades HAD to be in by midnight last night.
no grade.
wtf. seriously. am i the only one? i can't call the registrar's office till after 9am to see if grades have been posted for that class...
3 weeks to grade the midterms. maybe by Christmas, I'll have a grade for this class.
update: called the registrar, said, "the website is not showing a grade for this class, have grades been turned in?" to which that question was ignored, the nice lady on the other end pulled up my record and said "i'm showing you don't have a grade for that class."
DUH.
"I would email the professor to find out what the problem is." Yes. Let me do that, in a class where the embittered professor doesnt return work in a timely fashion and grades subjectively, shall we say. I don't think so. "Certainly, if grades do not post today, you should contact the professor."
*sigh*
so, i started rebuilding my laptop. most current OS. most current AntiVirus. most current security and search features turned on. something keeps crashing. i've turned off the search. i've turned off the journaling. i've turned off everything except the a/v and the security. this morning it froze without crashing. my desktop machine at work, which is even older, has no problems, but it isnt running the security features. i'll keep trying to pare it down till it works.
i did manage to get most of the porch decorations up, and dig out a fiber-optic tree that Nala's mom bought last year. it's starting to feel like christmas. really.
i also started to try to replace my am/fm radio with a newer car stereo, only to find out the brand which i bought only allows for wire-splicing, and no harness adapters. so, i took it back. i am not a hobbyist, and i didnt feel like tearing my dash further apart or spending even more money to find out where each of the wires goes. so, one less present for myself for my birthday/christmas.
i've got two rebates to send in, and i also have to mail a package. this probably means standing in long lines at lunch. or waiting till wednesday to mail things on campus.
oh, and while i thought my prof was joking about waiting till the last possible minute to grade things, it seems she is. grades have to be in today, and there's no sign.
finished up my last final at 5:15 last night and hurried out the door, hoping to have time to rebuild my laptop before bed. instead, we conversed till 10pm regarding comics and action figures. it's dangerous getting us all three together, since we'll talk for hours.
i ended up starting the install right before bed, and closing the laptop due to the eeek--uuurk of the dvd drive. of course, it continued after a while, but more muffled, and when I opened the laptop in the morning, the install was done!
of course, logging onto our home network was impossible, since I didnt have the key handy, but instead I hopped the neighbor's unsecured one to do some necessary updates. now, I'm at work and have to finish the software installs, and get the managed anti-virus taken care of.
fun stuff, y'know.
and of course, i hope that the backups I made were successful before i blew everything away and repartitioned.
last night, nala arranged to have mr. b come over and help sort comics. i had Nala order a "superman" from PJ's Generic Pizza, and headed home, only to have Mr. B hand me a JLU Vigilante single-packed figure and say "happy birthday!"
to get something you've been looking for and havent seen in any store? awesome.
thanks mr. & mrs. b!
yes, i'm taking 5 minutes to post.
final #1 is done. better than the midterm, and i feel ok. i still may do horribly bad, but I gave it a full hour of the hour and a half, and i answered all three essay questions better than I did on the midterm. unfortunately, i still didnt have half of the identification terms in my notes, so that part sucked. knowing that these (and the papers, done 2 weeks ago) won't be graded until the day grades need to be posted (next monday at midnight), i can't help but say "good riddance" to this class. seriously. 3 weeks to grade the final left only 2 weeks to figure out how to study for the final (and hope that you took good notes). and the paper remains a joke. my hope is to pass and move on, although the moving on is the more realistic part. i'll still need 3 more humanities classes. *choke*
final #2 is due by the time i leave work today. actually, it's not due till 6:48pm, but since i'm planning on pizza and friends at 6pm, I need to be done in the next hour and a half.
and boy oh boy do i have a post to make about new action figures over at the other site. so much news, i can barely wait till after work to raid the target.
oh, and i met stretch goals for the year. what does that mean (supposedly)? BONUS! we shall see.
my dad told me (via phone) to go buy myself a cake and eat it all myself. i don't think i'm gonna do that. although, a cake from mozart's sounds delicious, (thanks evebird, for showing me the joys of local bakeries), I'll be eating pumpkin pie instead, for now.
I had to use up an open can of pumpkin and ended up making some pie, and a pumpkin "casserole" because I didn't have enough pie crusts, which used up a couple eggs and some crescent roll dough. I also made chili and soup to use up onion and celery, and cornbread and blueberry muffins to use up some eggs. and, to use up the apples I had, I ended up making a small apple crisp, which I ate ALL of, for lunch yesterday.
So, I'm set for dinner thru Wednesday, whether I like it or not. The chili has one small serving left, which I'll probably throw on top of spaghetti, and then it'll be vegetable soup soup and more soup. (Which, nala wholeheartedly approved of)
Wednesday night, I'm thinking of making a pot roast, which should feed me Thursday and Friday. (Nala is fasting, so no food for him, anyway). Then, Friday, I'm thinking of making a small Giada-stuffing meatloaf to use up the rest of the olives, and mashed potatoes. The leftovers from that, I'll add to some spaghetti and sauce, and have that on Sunday.
Other dishes to make soon:
Turkey Mushroom Stroganoff
Baked chicken ziti
Baked tilapia with scallops over fettuccini with cream sauce.
Sausage chili
Chicken kluski soup
Vegetable soup (again)
That should just about empty the freezer upstairs, and probably feed me till it's time to celebrate Hawk's Mom's birthday.
woo. it's a monday. cleaning up kitchen messes, wearing wrinkly clothes, drinking crap coffee from the machine, late for a meeting. just another monday.
oh, and lest I forget... it's FINALS WEEK. dread the finals week.
i'm still remembering last year at this time... trying to have a nice dinner out was thwarted by lots of stress, a migraine, and poor service, all to the point of my just getting mad, eating mediocre Hoggy's, and generally wishing the day was over.
i just got my license renewed. my new one expires in 2010. in writing, that seems like such a distant time. it seems like that's a lifetime from now. it's just 4 years. but it seems like "Really? Will I even still be alive then?" seriously, that thought crossed my mind.
tgif.
and happy belated bday to kelmeister. again. dammit, i never get it right.