tortoisegirl

Spring break yay~

Finished up midterms yesterday, thus ending the Week of Writing Papers About Communists (fuck you, Stalin). The week also made me question the wisdom of taking a high level anthro class when I know jack shit about anthropology. I really like the parts of learning Chinese history but the anthro bits are kinda going over my head, so at this point I'm aiming for a good grade out of the class rather than a complete understanding of wtf is going on. And learning about the Chinese communists nicely compliments the class on the Cold War.

Also in school news, I'm pretty sure I only need four more classes to graduate. I say pretty sure because I'm far too cynical to believe I read the credit progress report 100% right, but either way graduation is within sight. I'll meet with an adviser (and hopefully one from the English department this time because the other ones were no help) to talk things out and make sure. I have to decide if I want to take the 3d level Japanese course, though, since I can take an international studies class to fulfill those credits. :/ I've been out of practice for two semesters now and I know it'll be hard to get back into the language.

I swear I'll think of something to post about other than school one of these days. Maybe I'll post a review of The Wolfman, since I saw that a few weekends ago.

Snowed in all day yesterday and today, so instead of being useful I decided to make cupcakes. I had a ton of leftover icing from making my mom's birthday cake last week and got a little carried away with the decorating.







Lisa recognized the Watchmen smiley, but no one got the 35 minutes ago one, and gave me funny looks when I tried to explain it.  AND I STILL HAVE SO MUCH FUCKING ICING so I'll likely end up making more just to use it up.

Does anyone who's more comic-savvy than I know of an comics/graphic novels that have to do with either Arthurian romance, Shakespeare's The Tempest, or Milton's Paradise Lost?

It's for a school project- find some part of pop culture that can be considered a modern interpretation of the aforementioned stories and do some project on them (so far I think I just have to prove the connection between the source material and the modern material). It can also be a movie, song, etc (so other suggestions are welcome) but I'd rather go the comics route. I don't know which topic I'll be assigned yet, but those were my first three choices.

If any of the local friends know of someone who can take in a cat, let me know. It's a two year old female, spayed and with all her shots, declawed on her front paws. Her name's Diamond.

It's the cat that Lisa's friend gave to us about a month ago, but things are going terribly introducing her to Blackie. He's violent every time he catches sight of her, and she's been living in a bedroom with food a litter box since she got here. She won't even leave the room on her own now. It doesn't look like they're going to get along, and she pretty much terrified here. All the shelters we've called are full and have encouraged us to find someone to take her on our own.

I feel really bad about this poor kitty being shunted from place to place. We took in her because the other family couldn't keep her, and now we can't either. :(

It's 2010! Time for a post.

The semester ended with the usual amounts of stress and sleep lost over procrastinated papers, but I survived and my grades are better than expected. Better than last semester, which is a huge relief. I've got classes for the coming semester, but I still have to put down some tuition (or, y'know, wait for the financial aid to kick in) before I'm technically registered for them. I'll post about them once it's settled since I feel like I'm jinxing it otherwise.

Christmas was lovely, New Year's Eve was boring but well stocked with alcohol, New Year's Day was spent in hungover misery. My dad and his girlfriend got me a membership to the Philadelphia Art Museum! And here I was just going to use my dad's girlfriend's name to get in and hope they didn't check IDs. One disappointment is that I didn't get any cash to finance the tattoo I want, and I can't really justify spending what little money I have on it otherwise. For my birthday then, maybe.

I have a Christmas disaster story! It's not really disastrous, but certainly depressing, and things were broken. Lisa made a gingerbread house; baked all the gingerbread herself and cut out the shapes and did all the decorating, and it was going to her present to our Dad. Walking from the car to Dad's apartment Julia was carrying the house on the tray, and gods of Christmas decided that that house would not make it. Julia slipped on ice, landed on the house, and broke it into a sad pile of little gingerbread shards. Our Dad never even got to see it, and we didn't take pictures. The picture of the gingerbread house I posted earlier was the 2d one we made. Turns out my dad baked a house too there was going to be some decorating after dinner, but we ended up just taking the house home and decorating it the next day. So one house was smushed and a second one turned out bright and colorful, and they all taste the same in the end.

I saw Sherlock Holmes, which was AWESOME and Holmes and Watson were so adorable together I couldn't stop grinning for hours afterwards. I almost started explaining the concept of slash to my mom on the drive home, but she didn't seem interested when I started talking about how H & W were cute together, so I didn't go any further. But it was a lovely movie, and I really appreciated all the Tesla-esque streampunk elements, and of course RDJ is just damn fine to look at. I think I have a think for Victorian menswear, because damn everyone looked hot in those clothes. That needs to come back in style.

In unrelated news, John Frusciante has left the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which makes me cry sad, sad, tears. But! Soundgarden is getting back together, I guess the universe evens out, musically at least. I'll still be fangirling over John's solo albums. Maybe over the Peppers still, depending on what happens with the new guitarist.

Work starts up again this week (and, uh, might be where I am right now. It's boring here today.) The days off are nicer, though, when I'm actually doing something with the rest of my time.

( Oh, bitch bitch bitch )

Alright that's enough emo LJing for now. Other things:

Missed one day of school because of the SEPTA strike. I was able to get the train to campus once I figured all the schedules so it was only one day I missed. Cost me more money than I'd like, taking the train for a week, and of course once I paid $40 to have my transpass upgraded to include trains the strike ended. I'll need to find excuses to take the train this month so that upgrade actually does something. Zones confuse me. I'm never sure if I'll have to pay more to get to certain stops.

I've decided I'm going to try to make some big fancy vegetarian entree for Thanksgiving, rather than making smaller side dishes. I'll start looking for ideas and recipes soon, though I can't let myself use that activity as a schoolwork procrastination excuse.

So many issues with payroll/paychecks at work. We started a new electronic clocking in system, but for the 1st week my log-in ID wasn't working so my boss had to go in and submit my hours herself. Once I got my paycheck it was three times what it should have been- the hours were all wrong. So despite how lovely it would be to have all that extra money, I told my boss and she calling someone who's looking into something and blah blah blah it's still being resolved. NEED MY MONEY NOW. Then this week my ID finally works, but I managed to screw things up and forgot to clock and then accidentally clock out at a weird time and generally creating a big mess my boss is going to have to go in and fix.

And to make this not completely a bitch-about-my-life entry, have a webcomic.

( Elves! )

I'm using my laptop on campus! Okay I know this really shouldn't be a post-worthy event, but this is only the second time I've used the laptop in public, and the first time I've connected to wifi. Which shows just how awesome I am at using technology to its full potential. My last class was canceled today so I could actually go home, but I lugged this computer all the way here and I'm going to use it on campus, dammit. So I'm in a comfy armchair in the library, and the guy next to me keeps cracking up at whatever he's doing on his computer. I'm thinking (and hoping) there'll be fewer distractions here than at home and I can get more work done.

My coworkers and I were all in the office today at the same time for the first time, so we've all finally met. They're supposed to run a focus group about online classes, though it looked like the one person who signed up for it wasn't going to show. I'm not involved with that, but I got a free piece of pizza out of it.

Going to see Maureen and baby on Sunday. Excited.

Alright, the main purpose of this entry was to celebrate actually making use of a laptop's portability. So I'm done now.

Happy Yom Kippur, everybody! My Judaism class was canceled for the holiday, though sadly not my later class, and since I'm not Jewish I can't justify staying home. And because of the cancellation I now have a three hour break between work and class. Blerg. But I wrangled me a computer here in the lab and I have a paper due Wednesday I can work on (or, y'know. I can blog).

Also I'm on a Mac right now and this is different and strange. I just googled "how to right click on a mac". This keyboard is a bitch to use, with the keys sticking and taking a lot of force to press down. None of the PC keyboards give me these problems. :P

Stayed late at work this morning since I didn't have to run off to class and finally met my coworker Paul. It's so strange working a job where I can go a month without meeting my coworkers, only interacting with them through emails and post-it notes. Work was very boring, since Dominique is out for Yom Kippur too, and calls and emails are very sparse. Ended up passing the time with a mix of homework and playing around on the internet.

Nothing interesting has been going on. Saw District 9 last week, which I loved. Need to figure out what's going on with my debit card, whether it's expired or not (it works some places and not others) and how to get a new one if it is. School goes on, though it's hard to believe it's only two weeks until midterms. The first big papers for two classes are due this week and next week. Oh, and we have a peer editing session for one of them on Wednesday, which I'm not looking forward to. I hate showing my writing to other people, and I hate having to critique my classmates' stuff. I never want to be too harsh even if they need it, or I can't find anything to comment on but feel like I should correct something. No fun, overall. Though at least it forces me to write a rough draft, which I should really get into the habit of doing rather than get frustrated trying to get it all right on the first go.

Okay then, must be going to class soon. So long.

So, the semesterly post on the start of school is in order, I guess.

One more class to go to today and the first week will be done. I did two days on my own in the office at work, survived that. Not much to do there, and my boss has been very helpful and concerned that I'm okay by myself there. Thus far no complaints from me about it all.

I'm very happy with my professors. I usually take forever registering because I look up the professors to see if they're good, but this time an adviser scheduled for me and I was nervous about who I'd be dealing with all semester. But they're all very enthusiastic about the classes and the subjects as well as nice and approachable. My Judaism professor tells corny jokes and put a picture of a kitten on the syllabus (just for fun- as far as I know kittens aren't part of the curriculum). My American Lit prof gave instructions on cutting our textbooks in half, literally, with a knife, because we'll only be using the first half in class and might want to save the extra weight.

Still have to buy all my books, though most are novels and hopefully can be got at a library or read online. I'm going to be doing a lot of speed reading to get through all of it, like last semester. I have a two hour break (which I'm on now) between classes during which hopefully I'll get stuff done, though it's usually a struggle not to fall asleep in the library while reading.

So, one more class today and we're watching a movie- Last of the Mohicans, which always reminds me how Sister Lucy in high school had us watch it in class because she had crush on Daniel Day Lewis. Then a three day weekend, yay!

And that's all to be said about the first week. Trying to read the first assigned novel online, so I'm off to continue that.