urbandruid

State of the virus: Sorted. Little fucker's gone, good riddance. Now I'm paranoid about other stuff getting in, but hey, whatever, you know? Gone! /State of the virus

The ants are trying to make a comeback, in totally weird places as usual. We found 'em in the kitchen, which, okay, I can understand, but the other place was Mom's closet. Not even the dirty clothes hamper or anything, just meandering around some random boxes.

Our ants are on crack. But that's okay, 'cause they're also toast. We're going another round with the outdoor bug spray this weekend, and any hills we find get a bottle of ammonia dumped on them. Ants, it turns out, do not like ammonia. It's kinda like salting the earth, too, because we've never had them come back in the same spots.

Note to self: Need to go to the 99 cent store and get some more bottles of ammonia. (We have a little left, but we also use it to clean up the indoor bug spray so Sam doesn't get into it. She seems to leave the ammonia alone, but we worry about the bug spray.)

I have- eek! -two weeks left of vacation, and I'm not ready to go back to school. I was, or close to it, but I feel sort of gypped on the last two or so weeks, courtesy of the virus. Far as I'm concerned, the only good thing about school starting is that maybe in another month, month and a half, it'll start cooling down a bit.

Right now it couldn't be winter soon enough. It's not as bad as it's been- but understand when I say that, I mean "it's not as bad as the week it was 109 to 112 all fucking week." So it's all relative.

Speaking of which, my grandparents have been out of town for the last week and a half or so. They're back on Monday. We're kind of not 100% looking forward to this. I mean, I love my relatives, but sometimes they can be a little... smothering. I'm thinking the next time we end up over there, I'll offer to go check out their internet security. I think they have broadband now, and that kinda scares me. An ounce of prevention might save me from having to play "search & destroy the virus."

Somewhat randomly, to all the cat people out there, I could use some advice. Sam hates having her claws cut, to the point where if I try to get more than one (sometimes even one, if she's in a bad enough mood) she'll swipe at me or try to bite. We're pretty sure that someone used to cut her claws way too short, and it kind of traumatized her- but I've got to cut the damn things. She likes to knead things- blankets, pillows, her humans- and those things are damn sharp.

Naturally her front claws are the ones I'd really like to get, but with them being, you know, by her head, I don't like to push it too far. I don't like getting bitten. Oh yeah, and the paw with the really sharp claws, she's hiding from us. She'll lay down and curl that paw up under her so that you can't even see it.

Clever little shit. I swear if she wasn't so cute, she'd be dead by now, but so what else is new?

I had some other stuff I was going to mention, but I can't think what it is right now. Too tired.

edited to add: I remembered one thing- I'm, um, pretty sure I passed a little kidney stone last week. Kidneys had been bugging me a bit, to the point where about midweek last week I said if I wasn't better by Monday (this past Monday, this would be) I'd have to call my doctor. I've got a pretty high pain tolerance, and was fairly miserable for other reasons that week anyway. And I kept getting really nauseated even though I was making sure to eat before I took any Advil or any of my other pills.

...Yeah. I kind of did a facepalm last weekend and went, "...Oh. Yeah."

In my defense I have to say that I was pretty distracted by the virus... but I still feel like an idiot. Definitely need to keep a better eye on my kidneys than that, especally with it still being summer in the city.

They ain't kidding, either. Today it was 109. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 112. Right now, it's 95, with 25% humidity.

Mom was out smoking on the front porch around sunset, and called me outside to check it out. It was pink, until it dropped into the smog layer, when it looked like somebody stuck a piece of wax paper in front of it. Purple, smoggy wax paper.

I hate summer. I really do.

I'm spending most of my time vegging out watching TV, or reading in the living room, because it's really too gross to be in my room. I'm thinking about changing rooms and taking what's now the office. My room has an outside wall and shares another wall with the garage, and it gets a ton of sun in the afternoon. For a couple hours in the afternoon, 3-5 or so, I literlly can't be in there. The office has one outside wall, but it's out front which is practically never in direct sun. I was in there this afternoon rearranging some books, and the only time I was really hot was when I was dragging some boxes out of the closet.

'Course, I also whacked my knee on one of the boxes. I was also silly enough to try shoving a paper box full of books with my foot. Didn't work, and I pulled a muscle in my foot trying. I was hoping it was just a minor thing, and I'm still hoping it's gone in the morning, but with my luck... I took some Advil earlier and am wearing one of Mom's ankle brace thingys on it. Guess we'll see.

I'm still kind of bummed about the lack of summer job. I really wanted to make some steady money this summer, instead of the drips and drabs I ocassionally get from selling stuff on eBay. (And don't they suck now? Argh!) But the economy sucks, it's a bad time to try and find even a crummy part time job; people are laying off, not hiring. But I have the job fair at school to look forward to in September or so. Plus all the retail places looking for temporary help around the holidays. I mean, retail sucks, sure, but it's not like I can work fast food. Talk about an OSHA violation waiting to happen! Visually impaired people and fry grease do not mix.

In other news, the ants are starting to show up again- Mom killed a couple scouting parties in her room and bathroom tonight. We figure they built our house on top of a bunch of anthills, and we're slowly wiping the fuckers out. I was freaking out a bit earlier, but when I calmed down I realized we're actually doing pretty damn good here. Last year they started marching in in April, and there were LOTS of them. It's July, and this is the first sign we've seen all year.

Of course, I'm going to be checking all the corners and places they usually turn up for a while, and every little itch, every stray cat hair that tickles my arm, or whatever- I'm going to be paranoid about. Oh well. We'll replace the bait stations out back this weekend, dump a bunch of bug spray and ammonia down any hills we find, and go from there. I just hate the things.

We couldn't get the regular black ones that just eat crumbs off the kitchen counter, nooo. We have to get the bloody fire ants, which I'm allergic to. Also their bites hurt like hell. Someone told me that all ants bite, even the black ones, but I've always seen them as somehow more benign, because they never really bothered me. We used to find them crawling around Grandma's front porch, and we'd just kind of idly step on them, or ignore them. They'd crawl over my feet, and I'd brush them off. Whatever they were looking for, I wasn't it. The fire ants, on the other hand, seem to be thinking more along the lines of, "Mmm, urbandruid, yum!" Little bastards. I still practically have nightmares about last year, when I woke up with them in my bed and crawling all over me. I still have to check the bed every night before I get in it, just in case. They also ate holes in my clothes. I have this theory that there's something in my sweat that they like, but... yeah. Going to change the subject now.

I managed to survive Father's Day, although we went back to the library there, and we did get another little speech. It's getting less weird; I guess I'm getting used to us talking about things but not talking about them. (Please don't worry if that made no sense to you; it's my family and sometimes I don't understand them.)

We keep making vague plans to take the train to Reno to see my aunt and uncle's new place (new being a relative term, I think they moved almost a year ago or so) and I hope we'll pick some days and actually go. I'm starting to feel the need to get out of here for a while again. I just have this feeling that it's going to be a crazy semester, once it gets going, with not much of a break at the end. Just holidays, and that's... well. I'll cross those bridges when I have to.

Honestly, it may be almost a relief to have something to focus on like school. I'm going to have a lot of work this semester with Spanish II (which reminds me I should review my Spanish again a few times, so I don't forget everything...) I'm not looking forward to the workload, exactly, but having something I can do, things that need to get done- the whole "can't freak out, must conjugate verbs for tomorrow" thing.

And I have good teachers this semester. I really wanted to take Spanish II from the same prof who taught my beginning class, and I was able to do that. He's amusing and I passed his other class. Life is good. And to balance out the Spanish, I signed up for Oceanography. Sounded interesting, and my favorite professor of all time is teaching it. Being able to pick my teachers is really awesome, and takes a lot of that beginning of the semester stress out of things.

I start back on the 18th of August. Week before that, I have a checkup at the dentist. (Oh yay.) It should be interesting- school, I mean, not the dentist. Personally I hope the dentist is very boring. They're really nice there, but it'd be cool if I didn't have to see them again this year. :)

So I guess the short version of the story is that I'm hanging in there. Doing pretty good, all things considered. Just hot. And tired, although less tired since I started taking my vitamins again. Putting the bottle where I can actually see it helps... Anyway, overall I'm trying not to worry too much about what might happen later, or when things may happen. This is kind of hard for me, but, I'm discovering, pretty essential to my sanity.

I still have a bunch of stuff I want to get done around here before I start back to school (see upcoming to-do list, if you really care. :) We'll see how much of it I manage to get done. Trying not to stress so much about that either. I'm trying to be Zen, as Mom says.

Some days it works better than others. :)

Gah. Why is it not Saturday yet?

It's not that I'm complaining about having Monday off, or the fact that I don't have class on Tuesdays ever, but this early in the semester, a day off always messes me up. I feel like I was only just getting used to the whole 'being back in school' thing, with the getting up early and all, and then they threw that at me.

Plus the class days after said day off always seem to drag on, and we always seem to get hit with more work. Higher education's way of saying, "The government may make us give you the day off, but now you have a day's worth of catchup work to do, mwahahahaha!"

I'm just taking Spanish; I dropped the British Lit class. I thought it'd be really cool, but it turned out to be mostly analyzing weird poetry written by British guys I think had undiagnosed psychological disorders. (Blake's bio read as classic schizophrenic to me...) And I was in a room full of English majors who, while I liked them because they're smarter than half my Spanish class, but actually having class with them kind of sucked. They sat there for an hour gushing over the Blake poems, how 'brilliant' and 'meaningful' they were, while I tried to keep from falling asleep (the curses of sitting in the front row- the profs tend to see that stuff.) :)

Anyway, I guess it's just as well I changed my major, 'cause I couldn't deal with a semester of that crap, let alone a couple years.

And on that note, I'd probably better go grab my layers of sweaters and jacket and scarf, because it's gonna be in the mid 50's and raining all freaking day. Whee...

Hi, guys.

Just a quick update to say I'm still alive. Feel like I've said this before, a couple of times maybe. Oh wait, I have.

Anyway. Not dead, just stressed, slammed with schoolwork...

I have a 5+ research/opinion paper due next Wednesday. I have about two pages done, okay, page and 3/4ths, whatever, and the rest of it is kind of floating around in my head waiting to get sorted out and put down on paper.

I'd have started a lot sooner- been done a lot sooner, too, but my teacher has seen fit to give us various 1-2 or 2-3 page papers in the weeks since he assigned the biggie, and of course they were due sooner, and, well, you get the idea.

Between that and getting sick- had a sinus infection, but I'm better now, except my allergies were so bad I went back to the doc because I thought I still had the infection... so now I have more allergy meds. Too.

I need a vacation, but the one I'm getting will suck. I get a couple of days around Thanksgiving, when the whole family will be in town and we're having dinner at the grandparents' new place. The plus side is that none of us have to cook- yay old folks' home with good cooks and a dining room.

Then I drag myself through a few more weeks of school, get through finals- my teacher says he may just have us write the last short paper out by hand in class with some stuff he gives us- um, yay... and then there is the not-very-long-at-all Christmas break. I'm pretty sure I'm back in school by the 7th of January or so.

Plus, you know, Christmas. It's looking like Turkey Day is gonna be our big family gathering, but still... I'm not expecting Christmas to be light on the stress, either.

Bleh. Have to go now, need to toss the books for my global warming paper into my backpack. Interesting stuff, but I'm already thoroughly sick of it, the way I get with all my research topics about this time.

See ya when I see ya.

Still alive, albeit just about flattened by the paper I had to finish up last night.

Things I've learned in English (Critical Reading and Writing) so far:

1. The paper format guidelines are in the syllabus for a reason. We are expected to use them.

2. Seventeen out of thirty students will do the first big paper.

3. Five of them will manage to get their margins and fonts write.

4. When given an extra WEEK to turn in said assignment, 8 people will still not do it.

5. My teacher ought to be a candidate for sainthood.

6. There are a couple of people who can always be counted on to spout off some totally bogus fact, then freak out when half the class doesn't believe them. Including the teacher.

7. 'Discussions' and 'debates' will almost always end with ten different people talking over each other, and maybe some shouting.

8. My side of the room almost never gets to talk unless the teacher shuts up the folks mentioned in #7.

more later...

I've been up since 5:30, mostly because I couldn't sleep. Actually I'm not sure that I ever really got to sleep last night- I wasn't really tired, it was hot, and when I did manage to doze off, I'd wake up again an hour or so later. Really annoying, and I'm sure I'm going to be hating life later today.

On the other hand, that was pretty much a given anyway, it being the first day of class and stuff.

Gods, I hate the first day of class. The first week, really. Six billion freshmen, who really think they're still as cool as they were in high school, scrambling for classes because they didn't have the sense to register in the spring when the rest of us did it... the crowds up at Disabled Students, where, I'm sorry to say, the freshmen are even more clueless... the seemingly endless list of start-of-the-semester crap I have to take care of on campus- forms to pick up, get filled out, and drop off again, new ID card (I wouldn't bother, but they started using them as our library cards last year)... other stuff I'm too not awake to think of at the moment.

It's going to be 99 today. Too. I guess I should be glad- a few days ago they were saying 100. But still, too bloody hot for the first day.

If I have to do this, can't I at least fast-forward to next month? It's really not so bad after the first few weeks, but until then... bleh.

Still alive, more or less. Spent Saturday in Yosemite with my geology class, and Sunday hauling boxes and cleaning out crap at the grandparents'.

My birthday is tomorrow. Finals start the week after next.

I'm probably going to be out of it a little while longer...

Okay, now school is kicking my ass.

We don't have midterm exams; we have what I'm starting to think of as midterms on the installment plan. I had a mini paper due yesterday in Psych, the rough draft of my big Psych paper is due tomorrow, I have an exam in Psych next week and I think maybe one in Geology too. Need to check...

Either way, I hardly have time to breathe. I'm sorry I've been so scarce, and I know there are huge piles of things I need to get done. And it's not gonna get any easier. I'll survive this, and then we'll be gearing up for finals.

I love spring semester. I love the part where it's over.

I'm still here, but school is kicking my ass. Not in the sense of being overwhelmed, just in the sense of being totally buried under all of the crap I have to do, half of it by next week. I have to register for fall, and summer if I'm doing anything over the summer, on the 14th. I vaguelly had this figured out- and then I decided to shake things up, and transfer to UC instead of a CSU. I want to go to Berkley. Have always wanted to go to Berkley, actually, but now I think I'm going to try to do it.

So I thought, okay, transfer reques are different between the two types of schools, let's go see the guidance councelor type person to make sure I have all my ducks in a row.

Not only did she only tell me a bunch of stuff I already knew, we seem to have a little bit of a disagreement (or, you know, a major one) as to what in fact constitutes a duck.

Plus I know some of the stuff she told me was flat-out wrong.

And because apparently she only works afternoons, I hung around after my 10:00-11:00AM class, to see her at 3:00PM. Figured on getting done with her at 3:30, and decided I'd just wait for Mom to get off work around 4:30ish.

The only part of yesterday's plan that worked out the way it was supposed to was Mom picking me up on her way home from work.

My councelor is an idiot. Not as much of an idiot as the one she replaced, but really not that bright, either. I know I need 2 semesters of a foreign language for UC, which I don't exactly have. I have one semester of French I scraped through, and I will not be taking French 2. And they have to be the same language, naturally. So I told her I want Russian, and by the way, does she know if the local Christian college still lets city college people into their summer schools, because they're the only local people who have the Russian classes.

What I got was "Russian is a VERY hard language to learn," and a strong hint that I couldn't do it. Anyone who knows me- she obviously doesn't- knows that telling me I can't do something is a very good way to make me want to stick a pen in your eye, and do it anyway. With bells on if possible.

That's one. Then she tells me, when I ask a question I already know the appropriate answer to, that there's no need for me to retake the math class last semester's meltdown caused me to fail, because I don't need it for the psychology major, and "you would just be wasting time." For additional support, she cited the argument that "Your GPA will come up after this semester to at least 3.0, and that's a perfectly fine GPA."

I don't know how she failed to notice my jaw hitting the floor. First of all, I want to go to UC, and not everyone who applies gets in, disabled or not. Second of all, I'm an honors student with my eye on a future spot in a very competative government internship program. A B avarage ain't gonna cut it. I also think my honor society advisors might have something to say about the B avarage...

Do I want to retake the math class from hell? Not really. Am I going to retake it? Not really seeing a lot of options that I find acceptable.

This idiot also takes a look at the general education requirements, which are different for UC vs CSU, and tells me that I do indeed still need a Speech class. Goes to the trouble to write out a slip for me to register for Speech in summer school. Not a bad idea, I guess, except that it says in all CAPS on the GE checklist "Oral communication - CSU only."

*headdesk*

And they pay her for this.

Thank Gods I'm me, I read everything, question everyone, and have heard eight ways from Sunday from friends and my mother that sometimes your councelor is the last person you want to be listening to, about anything. I used to think I was just spectacularly unlucky to have been stuck with a councelor used to dealing with, uh, not to be as horrid as this sounds, but people with other, uh, less physical disabilities. But one of my old gaming buddies, who was going to the local CSU at the time told me he wasn't having much better luck with his personal guidance idiot.

Needless to say I'm not really pleased about having wasted an afternoon at school that I could have used at home to sleep, or to do my own research into transfering to UC. But I've learned a lesson from this. I now know better than to go out of my way to waste time with that woman.

It just pisses me off, because I thought she was better than the old one. Scary thing is, she IS. The old one would have fainted if I said I wanted to go to Berkley. At least this one just nodded, said "good school," and told me their disabled students program rocks.

...Maybe I should look into said program before I take her word for it.

*sigh* I think I have a lot more work to do.

Too much about computers and their issues lately, not enough about me.

I'm pretty tired- school has been running me a little ragged lately, but doesnt it always? Im losing more keys, randomly now, seems like- the far end of the numbers, obviously the apostrophe is on the fritz again, and earlier today, the shift keys took a powder. Pretend the previous bit was in parentheses, those are screwed up too.

I have my first Abnormal Psych exam tomorrow, so I need to study a bit tonight. I'm not really too worried about it, though- I know this stuff. At least most of it. I think my first Geology exam may be next week. That one could be tricky- there's a hell of a lot of info in the first couple chapters.

Speaking of Geo, it amazes me how things can be so interesting in lecture- fascinating, actually... and then I go to do the reading. And I immediately feel like nodding off. Or like I'm about to nod off. For those insomniacs on my flist, I highly recommend this one: Earth, by Edward Tarbuck and Frederick Lutgens. No, I am not making up those names. I swear. This book is stupefyingly boring. I think when we get there, these two will have somehow managed to make even volcanoes boring. And I love volcanoes. In the sense of neat really destructive stuff I wouldnt really want to live near... Yeah. You know what I mean.

My book for Abnormal Psych is only a little bit less dull, but I expect it to get better with the next chapters; tomorrow's exam covers the boring chapter on the history of psychology, the chapter on the medical & psychodynamic models of psychology, and the one that's been putting me to sleep most recently- diagnostic tools & research methods. More specifically, the research crap. Maybe if they had examples of real studies that were a little less lame... Oh well.

Mentally, I'm hanging in there. Not doing too badly at all, actually. School is stressing me a bit, but I think its more in the range of normal stress than... well, than what happens when I'm not coping so well. The thing with Anna and her keyboard has really been throwing me lately, especally as it's so sporadic, and now the problem seems to be spreading. I can never count on everything working when I boot her up- I can't count on anything working. That's frustrating, and annoying, and on days when I'm coping less than brilliantly, it can be enough to have me bursting into tears. Stupid depression.

I'm not writing as much as I usually do, because of Anna's issues, and I think thats a big part of my stress and general feeling of crappiness. I do the bulk of my writing at the keyboard, for a number of reasons. One is convenience- most of it gets posted somewhere online, so already having it on the computer is a good idea.

Also, my handwriting is awful- no, I mean really really bad. It's a hand/eye coordination thing, and for some reason I'm not so fabulous at those. Every time I see the handwriting analysis guys on CSI, I chuckle, because I'm pretty sure they'd read mine wrong. I don't think it's changed much since, oh, junior high... Half the time I end up not capitalizing things, not because I'm going the e.e. cummings route, but because of the way I learned to write so that I could see it. Probably started in grade school, when they had us dropping the tails of letters down from the line... well, I wanted the space they were taking up for the next line. I drove my teachers crazy.

And this is my printing. My cursive- do they still even call it that? is atrociously bad. Like the printing, I can make it neater if I try, but that takes a lot of time, and mostly I don't bother. When I have to sign receipts and stuff, well... you can probably make out the C at the start. Other than that...

I guess the other thing is kind of related to the handwriting, which is that even when I'm not taking the time to make it really neat, it still takes me longer than most people to write stuff down. This is only mildly annoying for things like lecture notes- I usually just let those get really sloppy, and if need be will copy them out again later. But for stuff like writing, a keyboard has always been the only thing that could ever keep up with the speed of the thoughts in my head, exactly as I want to put them down. By the time I finish writing a sentance longhand, I'm five lines beyond it in my head, and struggling to catch up.

All of which makes writing a more frustrating experience than an- You know, its weird. It really isnt a leisure activity- I don't write like I read, or watch TV or movies- not just because I enjoy it. I write because I have to. Even if it's just a couple lines every day, maybe even every couple days if I'm really busy, even if it's just a couple lines scribbled in a notebook bitching about stupid crap like the vending machines at school- evil, money eating things that they are, and apparently some of their soda is really old and nasty, according to my honor society buddies.

Whatever, however little it is, I have to write stuff down. And lately the mediums for doing this have turned into a whole mess of frustration on their own. But I need to write. When I can't, when I haven't at all for ages, weeks, months, I can turn into a pretty horrid person. Not as bad as I am when Im in pain and without drugs, but just all tense and stressed and... I don't know. Its kind of hard to explain. Sometimes it'll feel like there are too many words stuck in my head, like I need to open a valve and let some of them out.

I suspect I'm going to end up using a lot more paper before the computer thing resolves. I'll just have to get used to going slower.

In other news, Sam is still being Sam, cute and occasionally very annoying. Last month she got into Moms closet- which, okay, no problem, though Mom would rather she didn't stay there forever. But we have one of those big plastic things you put rolls of wrapping paper in, right? And it has a lid, with a compartment where you can put your ribbons and your gift tags and whatnot. And Sam, clever little thing that she is, knocked over the container, and the ribbon thing must've fallen open, because the next time Mom went into her closet, she found... ribbon.

Ribbon everywhere, those spools of it that come like yarn, just wrapped around themselves. Well, they weren't wrapped around much except each other when we found them, and I discovered that however they put those together at the ribbon factory, it can't easily be duplicated by humans. I think the cat had a blast, though.

She's grown tons since the last pictures I posted of her. I have newer ones, and sometime (hahaha, right, in my *cough* spare time) I'll post them. She's gotten bigger, really just filling in. And that disgusting kitty-tuna canned food the vet suggested we put her on, has made her fur all sleek and shiny and OMGSoSoft!

She sheds like mad. White fur for all your dark clothing shedding needs, grey fur for all your light colors. :)