I bought a car! Yup, I now can join the ranks of those who don't have to take the bus anymore. My new baby is a white '99 Volkswagen Jetta GLS. I've always wanted a VW since I was 12 or something, so in a way this is my dream car. There are two downsides to my new used car; the radio doesn't work and there may be a leak somewhere in the trunk since the carpet in there smells like mildew. But I don't think these problems won't cost a fortune to fix. Then I'll get to decorate it!

Unfortunately, I got the car Wednesday night and then went to work. I slept in on Thursday and woke up when it was dark so no driving practice. Slept in and then went to work so no driving practice on Friday. I came home late Saturday feeling sick so I went to bed and slept the rest of the day. Today (Sunday) I actually feel worse so no driving either. I'll actually drive it one day... Hopefully, I'll feel better and drive it tomorrow.

I finished my first book of the summer. Dean Koontz's "Phantoms". It only took me three weeks to finish. This is not good, I normally can finish two books by then. This could be caused by my adjusting to living with a two year old, and the increase in noise level that comes with it. I also have yet to make friends with the local library since moving. I'm sure that will help my reading speed increase too. But in my defense, I have been reading a butt load of manga and fanfics so I haven't completely stopped reading altogether...

And my computer is slowly dieing on me. Six moths ago, my space bar stopped working properly; then two days ago my dvd player just won't work and then yesterday my "A"button got stuck and then just a few minutes ago the key itself popped off.

So I guess I'm going computer shopping on Monday. This Laptop I'm writing on has lasted just about 5 years. It's had a good run. Sigh.

I figured out the best way to spend the evening before graduation... watching Samurai 7 with stark_black while painting my fingernails and toenails!

I also figured out the best way to spend the night of your graduation... eating a huge plate of nachos and drinking huge margaritas while talking over fic ideas and graduation stories with stark!

Graduation was great! My friends screamed so loud for me when my name was called, it was great. I'm pretty sure the whole hall heard. Whenever I looked back I could see my friends waving at me and grinning. I felt so loved!

Afterwards, when we all found each other, everyone kept saying how pretty I looked (thanks to stark) and how proud they were of me. Then, one of my family friends held up a calendar she had made for me with a picture my parents had taken together after I was born. She said she wanted to make sure they saw me graduate. That did it, I started crying. I was doing so good until I saw the picture. Pretty soon, everyone was crying. After we pulled ourselves together, Stark and I went off to capitol hill to have a drink and get some food. It was a great night!

Next Saturday is going to be great too, that's when my graduation party happens and I'll get to see all of my friends that couldn't come to the ceremony. Plus, I get to eat cake! Yays!

Hokay!

Just finished my last final this morning and now I'll never have to do them ever again! Happy does not even begin to describe how I am feeling right now.

I graduate on Sunday and now I'm all nervous, what if I fall on stage? I know it probably happen but I still worry about it.

Tomorrow, I'm running all over getting my last minute stuff together. I have to get special underthings for my dress and comfy but pretty shoes and figure out if I have jewelry that matches the dress or not. It's gonna be hectic but a fun hectic.

Graduation party next Saturday, I get to hang out, eating BBQ and getting hugged all day (that's a good thing, by the way).

Bottom line, all the hard schooly stuff is over. YAAAY!

I tend to be a fairly low energy person. I don't like to cram my day full of things to do and would generally go with the flow. If I feel like going window shopping, I go; and that's about it for the excitement. Or I just do chores. I tend to have only one or two major things packed into my day with the rest spent reading or writing or people watching. So this coming weekend/next week is going to be nuts.

I'm moving Saturday and Sunday. And I'm not packed yet. I spent most of my week studying and writing term papers and taking tests and writing essays. I also promised The Clan that I'd drop by for a Memorial Day BBQ, completely forgetting that I'm moving... Sigh.

I'm also working tonight which means I have to try and go to sleep the second I get home so I get something close to rest before moving heavy shit across town.

Monday the internet and cable will be back on, just in time for me to type up and turn in an assignment due the next morning. I'm picking up Stark Black's Tuesday shifts for three weeks so I'm working the next night. Then I have another term paper due that Friday (I just finished my first term paper Wednesday) and I'm pretty sure I have an essay assignment and another exam in there somewhere.

I'm also going to be unpacking between desperately finishing assignments...

Did I also mention that I'm graduating in three weeks?

Oy! I'm off to go do breathing exercises so I can relax enough to sleep now...

Hey all,
School is nearing an end for me. I'm graduating at the end of next quarter and couldn't be happier!
The homework gods saw fit to give me a break from struggling to finish everything on time before my final film studies paper is due and finals week kicks in. I was messing around online and found something that tickled my funny bone and thought I'd share, especially since I'm a chemical dependency class... Enjoy!




*falls off the couch laughing again*

While everyone was having lovey stuff shoved down their throats, I was wishing I had a better immune system. I caught my yearly knock-you-on-your-ass cold. I managed to drag myself to the store and bought some strawberries and some chocolate cake to celebrate my first single Valentines Day in three years and I was so congested I couldn't taste the cake or the berries! It sucked. I don't have a fever anymore and I can finally breathe out of one nostril, so it's not all bad. All I need to do now is hurry up and hack up all this gack in my lungs and unplug my nose, I'll be able to sleep for more than three hours at a time! Once I get a full nights sleep, I'll know I'm better. Hey, it could be worse. I could have been depressed the whole time, considering I haven't been on a date in a year. On the positive side, I watched a whole bunch of 30 Rock and One Piece! I hope my F-list had a good V-D! Gotta go, I need more tea.

There was a 4.6 earthquake near Seattle today. I think the news said it was centered around Kingston. I felt it, it wasn't very dramatic. My apartment building shook, well more of a weird rolling/rocking motion. No damage on my end and none reported on the news. It was pretty cool. Kitty slept trough the whole thing, I guess she isn't one of those animals that can detect earthquakes. Damn.

According to some new LJ comments I received, I am a horrible American and only get off my ass to collect my welfare checks. Wow, I didn't know I was on welfare. That money would really come in handy paying for my dental bills.

I signed into LJ today to find all these responses to posts I've made telling me that I am a horrible person for not checking my mailbox and getting pissed off when a go to check my mail only to find that it's not there anymore.

I really hope it was worth the time they took to write those comments on an LJ that no one reads...

I spent the day reading manga and napping off and on. It didn't occur to me to look out the window. Around 8pm I did and was not happy with the results. I HAVE 2 INCHES OF SNOW ON MY BALCONY! I DON'T REMEMBER SAYING IT WAS OKAY TO SNOW AGAIN!

The trees are all outlined and I can't see the grass anymore. The basketball court is also completely covered. Some of the chain link fence is filled in with snow. It looks pretty, but I better be able to take the bus tomorrow. I need to buy food for the week and return my library books. All is not lost, the weather reports say it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

I had the perfect solution though, I baked chocolate chip cookies. They're in the oven right now. My apartment smells soooo good right now!

I just finished filling out an application for Petco. Now comes the hard part. Waiting.

CRAP IT'S SNOWING AGAIN!!!!

For those of you who don't live in Washington or are living under a rock, Seattle and surrounding areas have been covered in snow for the past 2 weeks. I never thought I'd get sick of snow...but I did. Everything but cable, internet and electricity shut down. The only way I left my house was when I had to go to the dentist and when Stark came to get me for work and for required family events. We all went a little stir crazy for a bit.

But it has started to melt so I can leave my apartment and stuff. I actually saw the grass this morning! It was great! It's been raining non stop for the last three days but I could care less because it's just water and won't stick and freeze.

But I just looked out the window a few minutes ago and saw that it was snowing again. I almost had a panic attack! It wasn't even conscious, it was just "wow it's really raining hard out there...HOLY SHIT IT'S SNOWING!!!" Then came the panic. It's gonna freeze and I'm gonna be stuck at home again for two weeks. I had no idea that a little snow could send me into a full on panic.
That is all.

P.S. I quit my job and have never been so excited to be unemployed.

So as all you lovely people know already, I work the graveyard shift at an assisted living facility with stark_black and for the most part, it's a pretty good job. Some of the residents are really cool and funny. Some of them page at 1:30am to got to the potty and are really giggly and silly. Other residents think you're a saint and a gourmet chef for making them toast in the middle of the night; That's the cool part of the job.

( Do NOT click here if you have a weak stomach!!! )

So I went to the store today to get some snacks and saw a display of pre-packaged bags of food that can be purchased for a set price and are then donated to a local food bank. Since I'm not rolling in cash right now, I passed it up. Then I remembered the local news reports I've been seeing about how food banks are so low on food, lower than normal since food prices are so high. I can't imagine how horrible it would feel to be hungry and being turned away from the one place you can get food from because their just isn't food. I went back to the display and picked one up. It was only $10 so it didn't put a dent in my account, and there was a fair amount of cans and boxes in there (there was some good weight to the bag).

This reminded me of one year,emailerin donated what she would have spent on a gift for family and friends and donated it to charity. I loved it! I'm thinking about doing that this year but donating the money to food banks instead of org.s that give kids toys. All those news shots of bare shelves in local food banks really struck me.

What do you all think? Any better ideas?

*sigh*
I hate Thursdays. I have my organizational behavior class on those days. That means I have to work with the group I hate. Not only do we have the requisite silent ones, we have an overachiever and an emotionally exhausting member. This one is constantly talking to you about her various medical and personal problems. For instance, during break time she walked up to me and showed me what she wants our other group members to do (which is to basically have them create a detailed script for her and then demanded we set up a time to practice the presentation we will be giving) and then launched into a speech about how she had a whole bunch of skin tags removed (whatever those are) yesterday and how she almost didn't come to class. The whole time I'm chanting 'go away, go away, I don't care, go away' in my head.

She will literally launch into her health problems/personal problems if you do so much as glance at her! It's horrible! She'll even talk about this stuff during class! The first thing I learned about the woman when our group first met was that she has an anxiety disorder. Big fucking deal, I've been on prozak for 2 years, I don't care and neither does anyone else!! She also makes these really disgusting hacking coughing sounds. It really sounds like she is trying to expel a lung. It happens at least 15 times before class is over. The sounds she makes are so loud, you can hear it in the other classroom our teacher is beamed to.

I feel kinda bad about all this because I'm so turned off by my group, I don't care anymore. I don't work very hard and I can only stand to meet as a group for about 5 minutes before I mentally check out. The really sucky part is that me and annoying woman are doing the presentation in about 2 weeks. Annoying woman is constantly pushing our group to complete our powerpoint presentation ASAP because she has an anxiety disorder and she needs as much time to practice the presentation until it's memorized as possible because if not she's going to turn into a pumpkin...or something. It's just a presentation! I understand that she wants to get a good grade, so do I. I just don't see the point making such a big deal over something that is so far off. Maybe it's because we work differently, I'm more relaxed and tend to wing my presentations and still do well while she seems to be the opposite. It's really frustrating.

Other than the group work that we do twice a week, the class is really nice. At least my teacher is funny...

I still can't believe this. I can't say anything else. I keep flashing back to conversations with my dad about being black in this country. He used to say over and over that a black man would never be elected president. At the risk of sounding cliche, I'm so happy he's been proven wrong. I actually cried when I found out Obama won. I was so happy but also so sad because my parents, who had suffered because my mother had the audacity to marry a black man and who were such supporters if civil rights, are not here to share this moment with me. I would give anything to see the look on my fathers face right now. That's all I can type right now, I'm crying too hard to see the keyboard. I miss my parents.

School started. I have about 2 to 2.5 hours of class Mondays through Thursday and then I work Fridays and Saturdays. Sunday is my only day off and I spend that day sleeping. Wow, there goes my social life... I went over my school records and it looks like I only have about two quarters of school left before I graduate, so the end is in sight. I'm going to email my advisor and ask him to look at my records and make sure my math is right (which it probably isn't ).

So far I really like all my teachers and am pleasantly surprised to learn that both my Organizational Behavior class and my Human Resource Management class look kinda fun, both my teachers are passionate about their topics and are pretty funny. One of my teachers was born in South Africa so he has a really cool accent, but he's mastered American slang so it's really cool to listen to him talk.

My Psychology of Women class is, surprisingly crappy. The teacher is pretty intense. She's constantly making announcements on our class website about students who made dumb first week of class mistakes that slow down her grading process and how annoying it is to have to help students correct computer problems (this is an online class). Isn't this the kinda shit she should be expecting? This is the first week of class, of course there are going to be problems! Then. not everyone is a computer genius who has taken tons of online classes! I wouldn't mind if she didn't have such a confrontational way of writing. She sounds like a burnt out teacher.

I'm also running into motivational problems at work. I'm having a hard time coping with the fact that everyone at work seems to think noc-shift doesn't do anything. Don't get me wrong, noc-shift isn't as stressful as working during the day, but that doesn't mean I sit on my ass all night eating bon-bons. You are required to check residents, do their laundry, clean all public areas of the building (which entails cleaning and sanitizing tables, stoves, counter tops and floors, vacuuming and taking out garbage) , check resident's depends and change them if needed, blow up balloons for the front desk (God help you if you don't do balloons. The corporation will collapse if noc shift doesn't blow up balloons, even if they aren't used) and then answering residents pages.

These range from residents repeatedly pushing the call buttons and then telling us they didn't page while holding the button, residents that need help going to the bathroom, catheter bags that need emptying, residents who fell and need help up and potentially an ambulance, resident's family coming over and lastly residents who page because they are agitated. Any of these pages can take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes. I'm not fishing for sympathy, it's just that I work my ass off doing this job and all of these jobs take time. Yes, I am normally sitting in the office when the day shift comes but that is because I did all my chores for the night and there are no residents paging. I am resting my feet. In the last few weeks, I'm not even just sitting there anymore. I'm folding napkins for the dinning room, folding laundry that I just finished or writing notes from my shift in the 24 hour log book. But yet when noc shift doesn't wash and fold all napkins for the dinning room or we don't inflate all 48 required balloons, everyone can't stop talking about how noc-shift are a bunch of good for nothing lazy asses. I'm pretty sure that if the building exploded at 3:30 in the afternoon, everyone would find a way to blame noc shift for it. It sucks donkey balls and really sucks your motivation. I mean why try when you're going to get criticized for any tiny, minuscule flaw or something the weekday noc shifters didn't do.

Those of you who know me for any period of time longer than two seconds probably know that I am a sucker for cute things. I have a cute folder in my bookmarks in firefox that has all of my cute websites. And I visit them many times a day.

So I was very surprised to find the antithesis of Cute Overload. It's called Ugly Overload and I managed to spend an hour and a half both laughing at and recoiling in horror at the animals posted therein. Now I will share this gem with you all. I hope you all enjoy the part about the wolf spider with thousands of her babies riding on her back. Now if you all would excuse me, I have to take a hot shower and scrub myself with bleach.


http://uglyoverload.blogspot.com/2008/08/wolfspidermum.html

*sigh*

I just got my femputer back and I'm sorry to say that I am hopelessly and utterly addicted to her. A few days ago one of my beloved femputer's (AKA my laptop) hinges cracked and I couldn't close the lid. At first I didn't worry about it but then a few days after that it got really bad. I'd move the screen around and would hear this horrible creaky plastic grating on plastic sound and then the plastic strip that helps hold the keyboard in place started coming up. I decided it was time to get my baby a little tune up. I did this google search for laptop repair in Lynnwood and got this site http://www.computersonics.com/showpages.asp?pid=1010 and discovered that they are pretty close so I packed up my baby and hopped on the bus.

I dropped it off and the guy that worked there told me that they could fix her and that he'd call later with an estimate. I went home and around 4pm I got the promised call. It was going to cost around $245 because they were going to have to replace the bottom part of the laptop. I figured that it was cheaper than buying a new one and I had some money in my savings so I went for it. The guy also said that I could pick it up the same day. I was feeling lazy so I said I'd pick it up tomorrow.

The whole rest of the night I caught myself reaching for her. At first it was to check when rythmic gymnastics was going to be on TV (because I am a closet gymnastics dork and I used to do it when I was younger) and then later when I wanted to watch some more One Piece and then even later when I wanted to watch some X-files in my room (I own the whole series on DVD because I'm a dork) and then later when I wanted to read some smut that I had saved. Every single time I would think to myself, "Hey, lets (insert activity here) on my femputer" and then cringe when I remembered she wasn't with me.

Finally, this morning I went to pick her up. One of the guys who worked there showed me what the problem was. This small plastic part near the hinge had snapped off. I made some random comment about how I probably shouldn't drop my laptop on the hinges anymore and paid for the repairs and went home. I turned my baby on and to my overwhelming joy, my laptop's touchpad is working again! They must have fixed it for me. I remembered the guy asking me if there was anything else that needed work and I mentioned the whole thouchpad thing but said that it wasn't a big deal and that I had a mouse. But I didn't think they'd fix it for me! I checked the bill and they didn't charge me for it! I'm so happy! I feel like I have a new laptop!

I have pink eye. I feel like crap. It's hot out. Damn it. I think I washed my hands about 7,000 times today. I think the skin's gonna come off. It started Tuesday morning a few hours before I got off work. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands after changing the residents and looked in the mirror. My left eye was red, red like I poured salt in it or something (Or I had been crying for the last 7 hours). I hadn't done anything to it! It was really itchy during my shift and it felt like there was something in there but I really didn't have time to itch it much. On the way home that morning my left eye startrd burning and tearing up. Now I've got major eye boogers. I never realized how often I itch my eye until I can't touch it. I'm glad I don't work tonight. I'd be really bitchy. I hate my left eye right now. I'm going to sit here and compose colorful curses for it. Stupid eye.