This Is Where The Title Goes

10:11pm: The Last Time I Register For Classes
Wow. Last time. Crazy, dude.

I enrolled in my internship as capstone like, last week. I just e-mailed the woman at the career center so I can get an appointment and talk about actual placement.

I wound up signing up for two history courses and a geography course. There weren't any Biology or Anthropology courses I could take - they were either too high a level or they met Monday-Wednesday-Friday or something. So I know one is History 101, and the other has something to do with recent history of the Middle East or something. I don't really remember, I'll look it up later. I feel a little guilty not doing another English course, but frankly I'm just sick to death of writing essays and papers and stuff. I like writing, but there are only so many ways to write about imagery in some boring old British poem or whatever.

Still need to finish up my editing project, and I will probably work on it some tomorrow. Also worksheets. Ugh. Soooooo sick of editing worksheets I could barf.

I also submitted some stuff to Grub Street last week, so we'll find out in February if anything got accepted. I'm hopeful regarding the poem, but the fiction probably doesn't have a chance. I might dig through some of my poetry again later and see if there's anything else worthwhile.

Have been watching "V". It's... okay, not great, not horrible. That one rebel V who killed Alan Tudyk's character a second time is kinda cute.

So, yeah, not a whole lot going on, just finishing up with school and such.

12:28am: The Eternal Struggle Between Myself and The Sims
So. I installed The Sims 2 and all of the expansion packs and stuff packs I have on the FR computer. I have loads of custom content, most of it crappy. So I moved over the good stuff, starting with objects. I haven't gotten to bodyshop files yet, I'll work on that next week or whenever I get time. Lord Darcy of the modding community made a mod ages ago that was supposed to fix the blue screen of death in the Ikea pack TV. So I installed it. What it actually did was fail to fix that problem and instead delete the textures for a bunch of my items plus one of the BASE GAME FLOORS. How the hell does that even happen? So I uninstalled and reinstalled everything, which took, like, two hours. Everything seems to be working again. Although I have to recreate my custom neighborhood.

I get the feeling that i missed some custom object that I used a lot on my old PC, but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was. Oh well. In other news, editing is still boring and I have yet to take notes for my Anthropology course even though I really need to do so.

3:15pm: Sexism
Oh, yes. I forgot to mention this in my earlier entry because it slipped my mind. But check it.

So in class yesterday, Professor McNerdy was talking about technical writing versus technical editing. And he starts talking about how you need a background in (whatever you're writing about but usually one of the hard sciences) to be a technical writer. Then he says you don't need that to be a technical editor and that it is an "effeminate" field because most technical editors are women and it focuses more on skills that women are good at and not on hard science. I BEG YOUR PARDON?! "Effeminate"? Skills that women are good at? Professor McNerdy is a douchebag. Yes it is the case that most technical editors are women (although I actually only have his word for it, so who knows how true that is) but they do it because they're just not good at hard science? Bullshit.

11:00pm: People From Quebec Are Fuckin Weird, Dude
doubly so when they are circus folk. Seriously, I like Cirque du Soleil's "Quidam" but what the fuck was up with the angry clown and the kid's Dad flying around with a newspaper on his head?

In other news, textbooks are a racket, for real. I shelled out, like $150.00 for two text books I really don't want.

10:07am: Things That Creep Me Out
I keep seeing pictures of these dolls on Deviant Art. They're Japanese or Korean or something so they're very waifish with big fucking heads and eyes. They are creepy as hell and I'm pretty sure that these people have some kind of kink about them too. Ugh. They stare with their cold dead eyes and it makes my skin crawl. They are not cute, they are horrifying. The ONLY thing worse is old porcelain dolls with partially smashed faces. Those things will eat your soul.

6:08pm: Cake Status
Cake = baked.

Now, as to whether or not it is any good? That remains to be seen. By the way, it is not so much that cake that is a lie so much as either the cooking time or the oven temp. The recipe claims 350 degrees for 30 minutes, but it took damn near an hour before the damn thing wasn't gooey in the middle.

Tomorrow I will learn to make icing and then we will find out whether or not the cake sucks or not.

11:16pm: Amazon Recomends
Okay. Look. I appreciate the e-mails that are all like "you may enjoy blahty-blah because you purchased such-and-such". They are often quite helpful. I especially love the ones from Barnes and Noble that let me know that an author I have bought before has a new book coming out. But just because I bought a textbook, that does not mean that I actually give a shit about that subject. It took me months to stop getting e-mail from Amazon about Anglo-Saxon poetry. And the amount of English literary theory crap I get? Hoo boy. Now I'm getting grammar guides. And I get it, i do, because I just ordered a text book about grammar for that course. But it was about english grammar. Why the flippety fuck are you e-mailing me about SPANISH grammar guides? I haven't taken spanish since high school, and I know full damn well I have never bought a book related even remotely to the spanish language through that site. What kind of stupid leap is that? "Oh, well, she bought a grammar guide for english, CLEARLY SHE MUST WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT SPANISH GRAMMAR! Clearly this is our winning business model!"

I did get Bizenghast 6 the other day, and I'm pretty disappointed with how short it is. I'm pretty sure it was delayed or something, and a good chunk of the back is an excerpt from the novelization (which I own already, I mean, jeez, it's been out for awhile). It was a real bummer that we get yet another character death, and hell, we didn't even get to know this character. I have a feeling that the writer's trying to wrap things up or something, yet there is a ton of material. Each vault is really a story and we've skipped over dozens. I swear, I think it would make an awesome T.V. series. Nicely episodic but with an overall story arc, easy enough to add in material. It could totally work. You even have the obligatory cute animal for merchandising in Edaniel. Just think: cuddly plush Edaniels available at Hot Topics nationwide.

Tomorrow I plan to bake a cake, and on Friday I will try to learn to make icing. Eventually I will learn to make baked apples. Also, my relatives and nearby friends may be visited by the desserts fairy, because one house only needs so many sweets, and I am both bored and have been watching Top Chef which makes me want to cook. Or bake. Whatever. Mostly bake, I actually cook most nights and I'm bored with it. It's too hot for the majority of my repetoire.

10:52pm: Oh Son Of A Bitch
So I got this game for Christmas. I didn't have a whole lot of time to play it, and when I finally did, it wouldn't run on my PC. After a lot of fuss, Dad finally got it to run on an old PC. So. Played through a bit, got stuck, and when I finally found a walkthrough I also discovered that there was a goddamned patch for the game so it actually WILL run on my PC. Decided to finish the damn thing on the older computer. Got to the third section and hit a puzzle that involves aligning something or other. And for whatever reason the game will not display the graphics properly. The textures are missing. FUCK. So now I have to start the entire game over on a different computer with the patch installed. It's really quite annoying.

10:46am: My Mini Vacation
Since I can't afford to go anywhere. I took my vacation this year by transporting myself into a realm of fantasy. In other words, i spent the weekend lounging around in my pajamas watching the Lord of the Rings as back to back as I could stand it.

I seriously can't get through Return of the King with dry eyes. If nothing else, Theoden's death gets my EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME. It's pathetic. I'd say "I'm such a girl" but, well, I am.

I guess I could watch them AGAIN but with commentary tracks but do I really want to do that to my back, which is already stiff? Well, yes frankly. Just, maybe not today.

In other news I just laid out $250.00 for the fucking privilege of parking at Towson. Now open up the Union garage you fuckers. I also finally applied for graduation, so Spring it is. Realistically I could have crammed in six classes and finished this Fall, but I really want an internship. and that just wouldn't work well with that kind of a course load. Oh well.

12:41am: Days of NonAccomplishment
Yeah, so my sister got married June 20th, and what pictures people have posted on facebook of me are pretty bad. Typical.

So I'm playing Final Fantasy IX and it pretty much blows. I have little to no control over my party, you learn abilities through equipment like armor and weapons, which means you have to downgrade equipment fairly often, I have only been able to select my party members ONCE, and indeed two of the supposedly major characters are absent for the majority of an entire disc. You main villain looks like a drag queen, I really know nothing about the main character other than he has a tail for some reason and for why on earth would anyone let a SIX YEAR OLD join their party to fight monsters? The moogles are cute, but when aren't they? The story is pretty dull and while I care about Vivi, I couldn't give a shit less about the others. I admit that some of Quina's cutscenes made me laugh, but s/he is useless in battle. God I hate blue mages. They are far more trouble than they are worth. I have more or less avoided any kind of levelling because it doesn't make much difference, and if I can avoid sidequests, I do so. I'm on disc three and I think I only started playing maybe a week and a half ago? I just want it to be done.

As far as PC games, at least part of the reason I don't play Sims 2 as much anymore is because, thanks to fucking SECUROM I can hardly ever get it to start. It vomits up errors about inserting the original disc instead of a backup. It is the original disc, damnit. There is no fix for it, either, I've looked. Repeatedly. Once in awhile, if I fool around with the D: drive I can get it to read it, but most of the time it's just sheer luck getting that game to start, and if I play for more than, say, an hour, it makes my computer start spitting out errors. If I'm lucky it's just virtual memory related stuff, but occasionally it makes the graphics drive puke and stop working. Bastard.

Beyond that, I'm pretty much stuck with laundry, cleaning, and cooking. Someone has to. I really need to write stuff, but I'm just drawing a blank.

Actually, I'm tempted to ask Leah to look over my second story from Spring semester since she was really really helpful with the first, but I don't want to take up her free time on a crappy story.

I think I need to make some new icons. I don't have as many because I couldn't renew my paid account, but I think I might have room for some others.

Whatever.

8:41pm: Eye Spy
So, I finally went to get my eyes examined because I haven't done so since I was, like, 17. Now, i knew I had an astigmatism, but my previous doctor really didn't tell me anything about it. So it turns out that it's a really bad astigmatism in my right eye and the prescription I have on my current glasses is not powerful enough to correct it. I'm talking, like, in the 200s for my right eye. So they wrote me a new prescription, and when I get my new pair of glasses in a week or so I'm going to need to adjust. If it works I can have 20/20 with my glasses on. If I can't adjust, I'll just have to live with not-as-good-as-20/20.

At first I was pissed and I was like: why am I pissed? It's not going to change anything. I figured it out though. I'm pissed because clearly my previous doctor should have fucking said something and done something to correct the issue. Had I known about it I certainly would have gone for more frequent eye exams.

I picked out new frames, by the by. I went with rectangular and black instead of what I wear now. Sadly my current frames are still available, but I've been wearing them for six years or so now and I'm tired of them. Hopefully these won't fall apart as easily.

11:03pm: OH AWESOME
So I bought myself a little Buddai at the Putty Hill flea market last weekend, and I guess he really is lucky because I got an A- in English 300. That paper was absolute crap, so I'm not sure how I passed with that high a grade, but it is awesome. I'm thinking a combination of luck and Phillips being a lazy grader with, like 40+ 10 page papers to read in less than a week. Yeah.

It sucks I missed Balticon, but maybe next year.

Also, I totally found the perfect dress for my cousin. I know she's the flower girl, but she's too big to shop in the kiddie section, so a white dress was pretty much impossible. But I found a dress in Macy's that was a shade or two lighter than the bridesmaid's dresses, and everyone loves it, so go me. It was the first thing i found on the rack, too. So, hey, I may not have thrown my sister a shower or a party, but I did pick out the bridemaid's dresses and the flower girl's dress, so at least I did something. On that topic, I hope my dress alterations are done soon, I'd like to see how it looks with a top that actually fits.

Plus that internet, while still spotty, actually connects, so thanks Verizon for doing whatever.

I'm in a much better mood and my stomach cramps are gone for the moment too. Yay.

9:15am: End of the Semester
Oh fuck you Dr. Creepy Perv. If anyone else had taught that class, I would have earned an A and you know it. But you gave me a B because you're an asshole who taught the most pointless class I have ever taken in my life, and I once took a class called Women and Leisure. You make ridiculous demands regarding papers and I hated your pop quizzes with a burning fury. Thanks for nothing. I seriously got nothing out of that class but a headache. Also, you are creepy.

In other news: things I have accomplished this week:

- took dress to be altered

- filled out, like, three job applications for my mother

- mowed the lawn (I so hate mowing the lawn)

- realized that I took hardly any notes for any of my classes this semester.

- not very much

So, Balticon is tomorrow. And. Uh. I'm not going. It sucks. But I have pretty much no money right now, and I can't bum it off my parents because my mother is having a lot of dental work done right now (root canal, tooth extraction, fillings, etc.) and they may very well lose their health insurance at the end of the month because my dad's boss is a frigid moronic bitch. Plus, I need new glasses. So it's either a weekend at a hotel with nerds or new glasses. In theory I could dip into my savings and scrape enough together to go, but here's the other thing: I've got no one to go with. I can't reach Kristen. Julie and Paul backed out because bus tickets from New Jersey aren't cheap. Steph is never interested. I could, in theory, take my younger cousin but A) he is, um, difficult and B)he's way into Star Trek. He would get more out of ShoreLeave. Some year, when I have time and money, I will take him.

So that is that. Alas.

I'm still waiting on two of my grades (sadly, the slightly important ones because these go towards Gen. Ed. and Degree requirements) so I'm not completely free and clear yet.

This weekend, instead of hanging out with nerds, I have to help find a flower girl dress for my cousin. To be honest, she's too old, and should be a junior bridesmaid, but my sister is hellbent on having a flowergirl. So whatever.

7:56pm: Tired of Writing
I thought I had seven projects, it turned out to be eight. I am sick of writing. I am sick of my computer. I am sick of back aches from sitting at my computer for hours. I am sick of "White Noise" although I still have eleven pages worth of term paper to go on that topic. Fuck you Don DeLillo and your shitty novel that I thought was mediocre. And also, fuck post-modernism because I am not digging it man.

6:17pm: A Winner is Who? A Winner Is Me.
So Ryan bet that I wouldn't come to class dressed like a pirate, and if I did he would have to dress like an alien.

I went to class dressed like a pirate. Everyone thought it was awesome and most people liked my hair. So in front of a room full of witnesses, Ryan said he would dress as either an alien or a wench. Or an alien wench. He tried to go for zombie but that's not embarrassing enough.

As I told him: never underestimate my ability to humiliate myself in public.

Also Mom made brownies, and the professor didn't like Crutches McCrabbyPants' story, so UNEXPECTED DOUBLE BONUS.

7:11am: Craziness!
Yesterday: Crazy Meltdown Chick came barreling out of the stairwell down by the English Dept. on the 2nd floor yelling: "I wish someone would shoot me in the head! Just shoot me int he head so I can die and lay on the floor in a pool of my own blood!"

I don't know what st her off, but I did learn from a classmate who went to highschool with her that in the 11th grade she got upon a table during health class (they were learning to cook or something) and threatened to slit her wrists if someone didn't ave sex with her. They were right next door to a preschool class, and all the little tots heard her.

Oh Crazy Meltdown Chick. You clearly need help, but you're so hilarious.

11:00pm: I'm Not Fond Of Poetry
So...

Workshopping for my poetry class has started. How do you nicely tell someone that their poetry is boring? I seriously spent, like, 8 hours playing Final Fantasy X in order to avoid writing my response on some girl's craptacular poems. At least, I have to say, I don't think I'm stuck with the one guy's. Ugh. I glanced them over and good lordy do they suck. Like, misspelled garbled pieces of crap that are always always always about Africa in some way so that he can lecture us all on the Congo. Or something.

I bought FFX-2 the other day and paid the guy 10 dollars in quarters. Then the idiot dropped them.

I figured out what is probably causing the muscle cramps of doom and it is, once again, related to my terrible posture while sitting at my computer which is probably why I avoided doing a lot of homework this weekend. I slump too much. And I still need to finish my mid-term for 300, and it's terrible because I think some of this stuff was in the book but I didn't take notes in class. I was doing logic problems. And cheating by looking at the answer guide because I'm stupid.

I'm really thirsty today, I have no idea why.

Ugh, and I have to research my damn 300 paper on crummy old White Noise which is boring and whah.

I enjoy Final Fantasy because even though they are cheesy as hell, I don't completely suck at them and I feel like I'm getting my money's worth for the amount of gameplay. I kind of like the sphere grid in X, actually, it's not hard to use and it's more satisfying than: congratulations, you reached level 60, you won't get a new ability until level 63 so go kill 579 more monsters for X amount of experience.

Jeff thinks Silent Hill is lame and he can just bite me because I like those games too even though I use walkthroughs because I'm too lame to solve puzzles myself.

9:33pm: Writing And Whatever And Yeah
Okay, second story for shitty class, done. Paper for Folklore and Literature? Not done, but it's not due until next week so I have time. Poems? Not done, again, have a week although I need to find out how many are actually, you know, due. I'm not writing seven in one week, good grief.

So, my story is about some loser who wakes up and decides that dying seems like a good option. Eventually he meets some woman who works in a coffee shop and shares this interest, and the loser develops some sort of meaning in his life by thinking about death a whole lot. It's terrible because I set out to write a very boring story because people seem to like those and then I made it kind of morbid. Also it's, like, 14 pages so I cut it way way down because we can't go over 20 pages. But hey, between this one and the previous, I think I've met the total page requirement for the semester. I should check. In order to avoid adverbs, I wrote in a very stilted style. I still used adverbs. I cannot escape them. God damn it.

Getting into Final Fantasy X, liking it, have to play blitzball which seems like a pain, but whatever. How the hell do you even pronounce Tidus? Tye-dus or Tee-dus? What a stupid name. Also he has stupid pants. But Final Fantasy XIII will have a guy who keeps a baby chocobo in his afro and that is just all kinds of awesome.

2:30pm: Still in Hell
God, it still hurts. I cannot lay down at all, and Mom keeps looking at me like I;m gonna die.

If this isn't better by tomorrow, I need to see a doctor. If it gets worse tonight, I'll go then.

WHAT A WONDERFUL SPRING BREAK.

8:17am: Welcome To My Personal Hell
Why hello thar inexplicable cramps in muscles that I've never had cramps in before. Why yes you are ridiculously painful and easily mistaken for a stomach ache. And I'm so pleased that you hurt the most when I'm laying down and feel the need to let me know this when I am trying to sleep. 4:00 in the morning you say? Why yes I will get up and sit in agony for hours unable to sleep, thanks a bunch! Pain so intense I was contemplating a trip to the emergency room? I think I will have a side order of that too. And golly gee whillikers, inexplicable cramps, thanks for being right below my ribcage so that sometimes breathing is uncomfortable causing me to continually debate about whether or not I should see a doctor about this. I appreciate it a whole lot.

Ugh. I am so fucking tired right now. 4 Advil and 4 and a half hours have gotten the pain down to a dull ache, but I only got about 4 hours of sleep. 4am is an ungodly hour and I never want to see it on Spring Break again. Ever. Need to figure out what the fuck is causing this.

9:59pm: Bummer, Dude
So...

My story was workshopped today. Apart from the usual technical issues involving grammar and mechanics:

Pretty much everyone hated the characters, the frame story and the entire concept. I was told it's been done, to death, and although it was "well written for what it is" there's no saving it.

Yeah. I dunno. I mean, I got a few positive comments, but the majority are pretty much negative. I'm not exactly sure what to write about now. I'm not good with deep explorations of human emotion in social situations, but apparently that is what people want.

I think I need to rethink my major.

On an a slightly unrelated note, I hate writing sonnets.

7:54pm: It's Supposed To Be Advanced, But...
Man. Some of the stories other people have written for my Fiction class have been pretty crappy. And poorly typed.

Snow day was good, but I wasted it once again by playing The Sims all damn day. My big accomplishment was fixing the audio on my Fifth Element DVD. Now there's dialogue and sound and shit. Hurray.

So, yeah, Balticon. Can't afford it at all this year. Paul and Julie claim they will buy my ticket, but they are full of crap and lies.

Also finally decided on bridesmaids dresses, so can order mine. Glad that's done.

4:48pm: I Am In A Pissy Mood, Goddamnit
Item 1, re: my pissy mood:

terrible weekend.

Item 2, re: my pissy mood:

my sister has chosen bridesmaids dresses (without anyone's consent) that are a) kind of ugly and b) do not come in my size.

Item 3, re: my pissy mood:

I cannot find anyone to go over my story and give criticism. It needs work, badly, and I just cannot figure out where to start. I do not want to head in to the workshop with only that second draft and watch it get torn to pieces, because it will, because the people in my class are elitist snobs. They work on Grub Street, guys, that means they are right and you are a worthless peon! As a side note, I debate over whether I should ever submit anything to Grub Street. On the one hand, I should try and get my work published wherever I can. On the other, I think they're elitist snobs with the exception of one person, and I hate them and their attitudes.

Anyway.

If you are willing to give solid criticism, and tell me how I can make my sucky story suck less, please comment. I would be grateful.


___________

To Chef finale tonight. I'm sad that Fabio is gone, and Jeff aka Chef Chase because he was decent eye candy. Hope Hosea loses, Hosea sucks.

4:20pm: HOME!
Oh thank you, yes, home at last! Terrible weekend, really, got none of my homework done, but I'm home! And we can have real food for dinner tonight! YAY!!

9:21pm: Sunday Night, It Ain't Alright
How did I spend my Saturday night? Trying to sleep off a cold. I feel kinda sucky, but not full out crappy yet. Oh man is school gonna be crazy fun.

Still have no story ideas. I have an opening in mind, but no idea as to where to go from there. I kind of need a plot.

Ugh. I don't feel like being creative and shit. That's for the birds.