Smoke and Mirrors

Can you say hiatus?

Hiatus. Yep. Didn't think I'd take one, but... blame it on Simmons. See, I thought it would be a great idea to take three classes over the summer -- I took one, the Intellectual Freedom class, last month, and I'm taking two during the next six weeks. I like them both a lot -- one of them is Information Services and the WWW (I'll learn HTML! Finally!) and the other is Literature of the Humanities. Both professors are great, and the classes are interesting. But the workload... oh, man. I sat down and figured it out, and it looks like I'll have at least two to three hours of homework a night. I'm trying to actually budget my time this semester, rather than leaving everything until the last minute. I also have assignments due every class session, so I can't procrastinate. So. I will have little free time, and less free brain space. I will likely be sending messages to the notify list, so now would be a good time to fill in that nifty little box at the bottom of the page. I keep reminding myself, I'll be done in December... but then I enter the scary world of job hunting. Aaaiiiieeee! In all seriousness, that scares the hell out of me. I've been having nightmares about it. I read job listings, and feel woefully underqualified. And I'm trying to figure out where I want to live -- I know I want out of Boston. I love it and all, but I'm dreadfully tired of it. I'm sick of being surrounded by people and noise. I want to be able to live alone. (Please, Lord, let me find a place where I can live without a roommate...) I want trees, and to be able to see stars at night. I know I want to stay close to family, and all my friends (except you online folks) are here. I've lived here longer than anywhere else. It scares me to think about leaving. But... I'll deal with that when the time comes. Got to get through July first. See you in a month. Join the list, and, as always, email me! I'll welcome the diversion. And, just to tide you over, here's me as a superhero, courtesy of the Hero Machine...

They lie, I tell you.

So, I was supposed to get Broadband yesterday. The appointment was scheduled for between 1-3 yesterday afternoon. I woke up early -- it was hot in my apartment, which made it hard to sleep. I fiddled around the apartment, redyed my hair (which I have been told is less pink than purple -- let's just call it fuscia) and played online for a while. At about 12:45 I grabbed a book and went downstairs to sit on the front porch to wait. (My doorbell doesn't work, and I knew it would be cooler downstairs on the porch than it was in my apartment.) I sat there reading until 2:45, when I decided I was bored and thirsty enough to go upstairs. I checked the voice mail, and found a message from the Broadband folks, saying (in a snide sort of way) that the technitian had been at my house at 1:15, and no one was home, and if I wanted the installation, I should reschedule for a time when I would actually be home. The weird thing was, the messagew had been left at 1:02 p.m., 13 minutes before the technician had allegedly been at my house. There's no way anyone could have come to the door without my seeing them, and them seeing me. I called the Broadband company, and shouted at the woman who answered (and then apologized for shouting, as she was really nice, and appalled by the whole thing) and got the appointment rescheduled, plus a $20 credit toward my first bill. So, hopefully, by next weekend I'll have my lightning-fast internet. For now, I still have dialup, and I'm annoyed by it.

Last night, Lee and Patrick and I went to see Tomb Raider. I had really had no interest in seeing it -- I have no idea why. I liked it a lot more than I expected to, though. The storyline was pure fluff, but the effects were good -- except for one effect that was so fake looking it was distracting: Angelina Jolie's breasts. I know they were trying to make her look more like the game character, but... they were oddly-shaped, and lumpy. And sometimes lopsided. And sometimes they moved all on their own. It was weird, and scary. The rest of the movie was good, but I kept getting distracted by the... things on her chest.

I'm wilting...

It's 10:47 p.m., and 88 degrees in my apartment. It is far, far too hot. I am melting into a little sweaty puddle of goo. The cats are lying as flat on the floor as possible, and glowering at me as if to say "Do something about this, would you?" Gah.

I just spent about 45 minutes trying to install my cable modem -- I'm getting Broadband hooked up tomorrow afternoon. Lightning fast internet! I am excited! But man, was installing the modem a pain in the ass. It was supposed to be easy -- follow the instructions, and bingo! You have a happy new modem! Ha. The instructions were wrong. I followed them, and plugged everything in, and it said that the USB cable wasn't connected. I checked -- it was. It said it wasn't. I argued, and swore, and restarted and tried again, and swore some more, and kicked things, (and then stopped kicking things because I had no shoes on, and it hurt) and finally called Lee and wailed "HELP!" She performed some magic, and I got the stupid modem working, and then my computer crashed three more times, and I swore loudly, and now all is calm. I took a very long, very cold shower, and now I have a rum-based drink and Radiohead playing, and all is well.

I am also very happy because I got tickets for the August Radiohead show. Joanne and Plaidy will be visiting, and I will have a much-needed vacation, and all will continue to be well.

The spiders in the bathroom? I've been leaving them alone. Letting them do their thing. Minding my own business. But they just had to fuck with me. They brought a much bigger, meaner cousin into it. A big, greenish, brute of a spider. I think it had tattoos. It was hiding in the shower curtain this morning, and when I staggered in to take a shower this morning, it lunged at my head. I did the sensible thing -- I screamed and ran out of the bathroom. After a few minutes, I realized I really needed to use the bathroom, so I was going to have to brave Big Tony the Spider Enforcer. I crept in, and found him hanging out on the wall. I considered squishing him with toilet paper, but that would mean getting my arm near him, and, well, that wasn't happening. He was just waiting for me to get close, and then he was going to eat my head. I could sense it. So I sprayed him with hairspray, and shrieked and ran away when he dropped off the wall and fell by my foot. He then vanished behind the toilet. He's lying in wait right now, waiting for a chance to kill me. He is. Shut up. I hate spiders...

The bugs. They're trying to kill me.

They are! This morning, I noticed a small black spider on the ceiling above my shower. I loathe and despise spiders, especially when they are in the shower with me, but this one was small, so I didn't mind it so much. Plus, it was way up on the ceiling, minding its own business, and not trying to eat my head. It was doing its thing, I was doing mine. We had an agreement, it seemed. Then I noticed that it was a very active spider. It was running all around the edges of the ceiling, over and over. Was it jogging? Lost, maybe? No, it was building a monster web. It was building a web all across my bathroom ceiling. I know what it's onto -- it saw me and my roommate, and figured "Hey! If I catch one of those, I won't have to go hunting for bugs for months! And it started building its web across the ceiling -- by tomorrow, the web will likely be big enough to snare one of us. If you don't hear from me, you'll know the spider ate my brain.

There is also an angry wasp on the loose somewhere in my apartment. I don't know where they come from, but every couple of months we get one random, pissed-off wasp buzzing around the house. I thought one of the screens was open or torn, but I've checked them, and they all seem fine. I'm thinking the wasps are nesting in the eaves, and every now and then one squeezes through the gaps between the top and bottom window panes. I just don't want the cats to get stung -- they try to catch the wasps, which just pisses them off more.

And lastly, a few minutes ago, a large moth divebombed my head. I am a bug magnet.

Perhaps the moth was attracted to my hair -- my bright, shiny, pretty hair:

It's all Kymm's fault. She visited, with her pretty glowing-pink hair, and I got jealous, and had to have pink hair of my own. So today, while hanging around Harvard Square with Columbine and Claire and Byrne, I bought some dye. Judging from the color swatch, I thought it would turn out a sort of wine-red -- it didn't. It is pink. As is the sunburn I got walking around Boston today. Oh my, is it pink. I love it -- my boss might not, so much. But hey, it's temporary, it'll wash out in a couple of weeks. I only meant to do streaks, but it got out of hand, and I ended up dyeing most of my head. Whee!

Byrne and Claire came into town to meet Columbine and I for a 3WA gathering -- we went for dim sum, which I had never had, and then wandered around Chinatown, then went to Harvard Square, where we sat in a nice little pub and had drinks and talked. Columbine knows everything about everything, Claire is way too much fun, and Byrne is just terribly sweet and adorable. I am very tired now, but too wired to go to sleep. Plus, the combined glowing of my hair and my sunburn will likely keep me awake.

Catching up...

I'm a little distracted at the moment. I'm breaking a self-imposed rule and watching the Colorado/New Jersey hockey game, and rooting for Colorado. I normally don't watch games when I really want a team to win, because my watching causes my team to lose. I really want Colorado to win. Ray Bourque needs a Stanley Cup, damn it! Oh, and woo hoo, Coloardo just scored. Yay!

I've been a big ball of sloth lately -- I finished my Intellectual Freedom and Censorship class, and am on a short break until June 23, when I'll be taking classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights, plus a class on Saturday mornings. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Saturday mornings? It is only six weeks, though, so I think I'll manage. I thought the censorship class would be interesting, but very little work, since it was just a five-session, two-credit course. Ha! The professor gave us about 70 articles to read, and told us to write a final project on 75% of the articles. That's a lot of reading, and a lot of writing, to be done in one week. Especially when the class ends at 9, and you don't even get home until after 10. Memorial Day was spent writing, from 2 p.m. 'til midnight, and I still hadn't quite finished. Last Wednesday, when the paper was due, I had a raging stomachache -- I couldn't sit comfortably, but standing up straight hurt more. I couldn't toucyh my stomach without wincing. I don't know what it was, but by the time I got to class I had chills and a fever, and just felt lousy. I had to give a five-minute presentation in class (not my favorite thing to do even when I am feeling well) and I was nearly incoherant. I got up and babbled about something, very briefly, then toild the professor I wasn't feeling well, and went back to my desk. Luckily, the presentation didn't count for much.

Thursday I didn't feel much better, so I stayed home. Slept until almost noon, cleaned a little, then curled up in bed watching bad daytime TV. Friday, two of my coworkers had the day off, so I knew I had to go in. I was feeling a bit better by then, anyway. Saturday I had to work most of the day -- it was okay, though, because it poured rain all day long. Our computer system crashed around midafternoon, so we had an excuse to sit and read and be absolutely useless -- we couldn't look anything up, could check books in or out, couldn't renew anything... Crap. New Jersey just scored. It's because I'm watching the game... I must change the channel. Saturday evening, after work, I met up with Patrick and Lee, and we went out to dinner, (the conversation in the car was, for some reason I have since forgotten, all about cooking things with Pez. Pez in blankets, Pez alfredo, Pez stroganoff, Pez pizza, etc. You wish you were us, don't you?) and then vegged in front of the TV. Sunday morning I slept far, far too late (woke up, looked at the clock and yelped "Holy shit! It's noon!") I dragged myself out of bed and parked myself at the computer with a very large mug of coffee, and found an email telling me that Kymm was in Boston, and Patrick, Lee and I would be meeting her for lunch. Hurrah! Lee picked me up, and after meeting up with MuppetGirl back at Lee's place, we headed off to Cambridge to fetch Patrick and find Kymm. She was easy to spot, with her lovely bright, bright pink hair (I am obsessed with dyeing mine purple now. It was a passing whim before, but now that I've seen Kymm's nuclear pink, I must have purple hair. I'm thinking a few streaks -- subtle at first, then more and more over time. It'll sneak up on people that way. I must dye my hair.) Kymm is way too much fun -- she talks just like she writes, and has a great, infectious laugh, and within five minutes of meeting you, is treating you as though she's known you for years. Loads of fun. We all trooped off to the Cheesecake Factory, where the greeters made us wait for ages for a table, then paged us to tell us the table wasn't ready yet, then finally seated us. We all ate tons of food, topped off with pounds and pounds of cheesecake, and then groaned our way outside, where we directed Kymm to the subway and bid her farewell. She's updated since then, so I know she found her way to the train station, and is not wandering arounbd somewhere, lost in the T tunnels with the mice. Patrick had to go back to work, so MuppetGirl and Lee and I headed back to Lee's house, where we loafed around watching MuppetBaby play until she was tired out and needed to be taken home for a nap. Lee and I fought off the food-induced inertia and went to BJ's Wholesale, where I bought a million bars of soap (completely forgetting the million bars of soap I already had at home -- I will be squeaky-clean for months to come!) and a metric buttload of coffee, and tons of deodorant (I'll smell pretty, too!) and a CD rack, and then we went back to collapse in front of the TV for a while longer. Home by 11:30, where I crawled into bed, all tired out, and... laid there staring at the ceiling, blinking and wondering why I was still awake, until almost 4. I know, I should get up when I can't sleep, because lying there only makes it worse, but... I was all warm, and comfortable, and the cat was there, so I just petted her for a while, and blinked at the ceiling, until I finally fell asleep. So. Now I'm very tired, and watching hockey, and that's about it...