Namaste, Bitches

This morning at some point, I dreamed I was praying to the Great Mystery in thanks for the rain. It woke me up, saying to myself, "Why am I thanking the Great Mystery for rain? It's not..." & then I went, "Ohhhh, it is raining!" since I heard it plinking off my Amityville window & heard the rainsong on the aluminum porch roof - it's not exactly rainsong on a tin roof, but it's close, and just as soothing. So I said thank you in real life & went back to sleep.

It's been a beautiful day, really - overcast, raining continuously. Gorgeous.

It's going to be a tight month financially. No work this week or next week so far. Ah well. I knew December would be bad - at least my tuition for Spring is paid & the car insurance for December, & the in-laws will always help w/groceries. There are always things that can be cut from the budget. Hopefully when the rodeo comes in, we'll all be working. I made my choice - time over money, and I have to live w/the new parameters I've set for myself. I did get a lot accomplished - finished my ecology project (on colony collapse disorder), finished my business proposal, took both my A+ finals & read yet another chapter of my ecology. Wish this guy would quit giving tests already.

I looked over my degree sheet this morning & came to the startling conclusion that I only have 8 more classes to go. That's like... 2 semesters! Yay!

I got the phone call today from Metro saying my background interview is going to happen!!! Aaagghhh! I am literally too excited. I am sooo glad I played hooky & took a 5 1/2 hr. early out from work today. The guy called at like, 3:30pm.

I've been exceedingly productive all day, too. Took my CIT 110 (that's the A+ certification for hardware class) & got a 85%. I still have problems differentiating between the address bus & the external data bus & what either is supposed to do or not do to the CPU. I set up doc appts. for me & Rob next week so we can get our respective b.p. meds refilled. Rescheduled my gyno appt as I will, of course, be on the rag this time next week. It never fails - my period always falls on my gyno appts & I always end up having to reschedule. I called the woman at Financial Aid at CSN to ask, "Hey, bitch, where's my money?!" & got to talk to her answering machine yet again.

Dude. I am so fucking wired right now. I actually managed to go at least a half hour w/out thinking of tongue-eating parasites.

I have to work a day shift on Tues. I have about 4 chapters worth of Ecology & 3 of CIT to read. I am wide fucking awake & all I really want to do is play WoW. I can tell this last year or so of school is going to be the hardest.

On a brighter note, in the past 2 weeks, I've made an extra $40 in tips alone. Schweet! Got a ten-spot from my first guest this morning :) (well, yesterday morning, it is 3am already). I also want sex, but not Rob sex. Strange sex. The stranger the better. Maybe something involving bondage, eels and Jell-O?

It's weird... I went from being extremely paranoid about the Internet to the point where it would take me days to rearrange my life if we lost it. I bank online, pay bills online, do research... I probably haven't picked up a telephone book in months. It's a royal pain in the ass dealing w/the Metro background check paperwork because that's exactly what it is - paperwork. I wonder to myself, who keeps all this crap? Seriously, who keeps all this crap? I called Clark County to see if I could get a listing of all the times I've applied or put in interest cards for jobs & they tell me they shred everything older than 6 months. Too much paperwork to keep around. I was positively gleeful when they put the application & interest card form online so I didn't have to keep going down there. Henderson, NLV, Salem, they all say the same thing - 6 months, that's it. You're only supposed to keep personal tax records going back 7 years. Most NV jobs are weird in that they want a 10-year employment history for their applications - most states only want 5. Still, I've been at the Ex for almost 7 years, so that's only 3 additional years to come up w/, not including the pt/hrly work I did while working f/t for the Ex. Metro wants it going back til when I was 16. Why would I keep 17-year old paystubs? Why? Especially for a job I didn't even have to declare to the IRS because I only worked 1 day?

When we got robbed, the first thing I found was paper (and dildos) strewn all over my room - that prompted a great throwing-away of much garbage.

Maybe that's all that really defines a person's existence - the paper trail we leave behind. Numbers and dates and addresses showing where we lived, where we went to school, where we worked, where we had kids, where we grew old & finally where we die.

Debbie at work told me her dad knew he would be dying (he had terminal cancer of some sort), so before he died, he bought his girlfriend (not Debbie's mom, his post-divorce girlfriend) a new car & paid off her bills & got a high-limit Sears card. He basically furnished her home, got tools & a riding lawn mower, all the things a person might need to care for their home & live comfortably in it. Well, the Sears card was in his name & he left his girlfriend's address as a contact address, but since they weren't married, she wasn't financially obligated to Sears. When they kept calling asking for Debbie's dad & sending collection notices to her home & weren't accepting the girlfriend's answer that he was deceased, she finally gave up & told them he moved. She then proceeded to give them the address & phone number of the cemetery where he was buried. I'm sure the funeral director was pleased the first time Sears called them to collect the debt.

I am footsore & weary this morning. It's way before my bedtime, but I had a busy day. I was outbid for lead, so I don't know what kind of schedule I'll have next week. Today I cleaned the kitchen for the first time since my surgery. Yeah, I know, gross. I mean, I'd wipe the counters & stuff, do dishes, wipe up the most severe spills, etc., but I was still sticking to the floor in there. I truly hate housework - at least when it's my house. I could psychologically justify it by saying that since Penny & my Aunt Liz used me as slave labor I just cringe at it, but really it's the sheer redundancy of the act. No matter how many times I clean that kitchen, it will not stay clean. Eventually, I'm going to spill something inside the stove top or drop something meaty and raw between the counter & the fridge or lose a grape somewhere... or dump half a can of coffee or fling frozen brussel sprouts everywhere like a pool-hall breakshot. I don't like mopping the floor and I didn't mop today, probably do it tomorrow. I just keep using sanitizing wipes to clear off my bathroom counter. At least I did get around to pulling out the booster seat from the toilet & taking the shower chair out of there a couple of months ago. I do have to admit, Easy-Off oven cleaner is an amazing de-greaser - my hands are like sandpaper. The only reason I launched into it with such gusto is because I've been finding flying ants in the house & I don't want to give any budding queens the idea that this is a 5-star nesting site.

Had to go to the college - my loan app got sent back since I wasn't qualified for the type of loan I requested. Of course, no one from the college calls - it's mostly DIY at (C)CSN Been sitting there since the 3rd & no one bothers to even have a recorded machine call: "Hey, you're a dork & checked the wrong box on your student loan application". I swear to Gods, the people at the financial aid dept. on the Charleston campus are the rudest bitches on the face of the planet, & they just get ruder the closer it gets to the semester starting.

Rob keeps wanting some sort of marathon sex session involving toys & ties & film & possibly a neighbor's dog or someone's burro and a few circus clowns swinging from chandeliers, but lately I've been icked out by the whole act of intercourse. I wish I could just blow him & he'd go away, but he's striving for that intimacy. I haven't even been jilling off much. Just haven't been able to get around to it like we used to & the whole thing seems so pathetically biological. We did it twice today, and my knees are fucking screaming. They were screaming before sex, though, right about after I was trying to clean the grease off the microwave (which is over the stove & involved me being on tip-toe).

Took my Psych 101 syllabus quiz a few minutes ago. It was challenging. Had 3 whopping questions on it:

1) I have read the syllabus (Yes or No)

2) I understand the syllabus (Yes or No)

3) I will follow the syllabus (Yes or No)

Number 3 was actually the one I had to think about the longest. I mean, it is a Psych class, and I am a bit of a rebel. Horrors to think my instructor would just assume that I would do what a course description told me to do.

Woohoo - no more math!!! I got a C!!!

Ran around a little today after physical therapy - went to the Home Depot to get Ed & Nessie new pots... post office, pet store to get mice.

I've got some work yet to do on my webpage & my finals for the web class & science class & then it's all over til my Psych class starts in June. Weee!

Went to the hematologist today - no leukemia, no lymphoma, I'm still perfectly normal. I may start donating my white blood cells, though, since I've got more than I need on a regular basis. It's not even due to allergies - according to my chemistry, I don't have allergies or inflammation or a recent injury to my bone marrow system (the surgery, not exactly an injury). At least now my doctor can only pester me continually about my cholesterol ratio. Hah!

It's amazing what they can do with blood these days. Used to be it was all just whole blood & you never knew what you might end up when you got a transfusion. Unless a pregnant woman might have the rH factor, they don't blood-type people, unless maybe they still do it as routine pediatric care. I don't know (well, I used to know, I don't remember) what my blood type is - and no one cares, either. Now if you have to have a transfusion, they draw your blood & type it at the lab or in the emergency room, then they go through a detailed check-system with the blood they're going to give you where it's typed once at the storage facility & run through typing & instant analysis at the facility that's going to give it to you - once when it's received and once by the assistants to the surgeon or doctor who gives you the transfusion. To store a couple of bags of your own blood prior to surgery, the local blood banks charge you to draw it & charge a storage fee - like about $400 a month!

Jody got her results back - she hasn't been poisoned & her pain killers aren't causing her seizures. She got something called a 'neural EEG' to trace the problems in her nervous system. In a way, it would have been better if she did have arsenic poisoning or something like that because then they could fix the problem. If she's got something like MD or cerebral palsy or has developed epilepsy... that's something that can't be fixed - it can only be medicated.

I really should be working on my webpage. I've only got two more pages to do - the 'Entertainment' page & the 'Directory', other than some minor tweaking here & there. I decided that if next semester's 'Introduction to Programming' is another java class, I'm going to drop it & take the A+ certification for hardware. I was thinking about taking 5 classes, but I already did that this semester & ended up dropping two classes. I seem to be finding anything else to do with my time. I also have a math quiz and questions for chapter 12 in my Environmental Science. What am I doing instead? Watching Star Trek: Voyager re-runs... blogging... loading new pictures in my screen saver program... In other words, I'm not doing what I should be doing and I'm not really doing anything else, either. I'm screwing off.

I put a guestbook on my geocities webpage, and I finally got the test entries I sent yesterday! Woohoo!

I am not good enough to program a confirmation page to pop up after the 'submit' button is pushed, so I wasn't sure if it actually worked or not - that and my Norton AV interfered.

That's all, no more no less. One word meme.

1. Where is your cell phone? Bedroom.
2. Describe your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/lover? Dork.
3. Your hair? Comfortable.
4. Your mother? Dead.
5. Your father? Dead.
6. Your favourite item? Book.
7. Your dream last night? Odd.
8. Your favourite drink? Tea.
9. Your dream car? Solstice.
10. The room you are in? Dark.
11. Your ex? Imaginary.
12. Your fear? Living.
13. What do you want to be in 10 years? Retired.
14. Who did you hang out with last night? Rob.
15. What you're not? Whole.
19. The last thing you did? Typed.
20. What are you wearing? Flowy.
21. Your favourite book? Imajica
22. The last thing you ate? Elavil.
23. Your life? Ephemeral.
24. Your mood? Annoyed.
25. Your friends? Serpents.
26. What are you thinking about right now? Sex. (Thanks, whoever I stole this from :P)
7. Your car? Truck.
28. What are you doing at the moment? Typing.
29. Your summer? Fiery.
30. Your relationship status? Married.
31. What is on your tv? Darkness.
32. When is the last time you laughed? Earlier.
33. Last time you cried? Moons.
34. School? Skipped!

I'm currently working on my Web Development project, and I think I gave myself more tedious busywork than I intended. I wish I could get away w/using PageMaker or DreamWeaver or some other web design program. I finally decided on an Insider's Guide to Las Vegas, with mostly tips for choosing a hotel & enjoying your choice. One page is a directory, which is basically a list of hotels from the What'sOn magazine, including addresses, basic location, phone numbers & links to the web pages for the individual hotels, along w/some shopping, attractions, dining, etc. You get the bland, basic picture. I have discovered, though, that making tables is boring. Especially when it's got 84 little boxes to fill in. It's all so very, very repetitious & cut/paste is only good for one thing at a time. I'd like a macro that just inserts non-breaking spaces into my lines for me. And line-breaks, too. Little buttons I could push that just say "Insert Non-Breaking Space" & "Insert Line Break". And I wish that my notepad would auto-fill in the rest of the tag for hyper-links, not just being able to copy/paste web addresses & having to add all the other crap myself. For some reason, my table is also off-center to my background. I've got a narrow margin on the left & a wide margin on the right.

We pretty much gave up our entire tax refund so I could get this knee surgery - and we still are going to owe an ass-load of cash. Our credit cards are constantly maxed out & I'm taking time off work, too, which means short paychecks when I go back. But I just never say anything to Jody other than, "Sorry I can't help, hon". If I complained even once, she'd launch into an endless tirade about Rob not working, and I hear enough of that crap from his mother. Me & Rob are at this odd standstill. We'll never get ahead, and I never put forth any effort to save money because I feel like if I show him how disciplined I can be with money, he'll have even more of a reason to stay at home on the couch. I just always complain to him about the bills being so high, wondering where the money goes, etc... and when he talks about getting out of here, I tell him it'll probably never happen because we just can't afford it. I've even mentioned the possibility of us giving up & agreeing to buy this house from his mom because we're probably going to be stuck here til she dies. In fact, she'll probably outlive us both so we'll just be stuck paying her rent til we die, but at least my social security & pension from the Union should be enough for Rob to get by on til then (as long as I go first). I know, it's a lot of passive-aggressive gameplaying, and nothing ever gets accomplished, but I just don't feel like being a nag. Nag, nag, nag. Go to work, go to work, go to work... nagging til the day we're both bitter and hateful, and still not being able to get away from each other.

I did have an odd dream last night (well, yesterday afternoon, back on the grave shedule after a week of drugged hiatus). I was working in a small convenience store. No one expected me to wipe down counters or stock or count cigarettes, so I know it was a dream (I worked one day in a Rebel gas station - oy!), but this woman (who I think was Jody) came in to buy cigarettes. She was bitching that we didn't have her brand & she only had 60 silver, when the packs we did have were 1 gold, 60 silver. (Obviously, Warcraft has colored my monetary system to an extent). Anyway, she hollered out the door to some guy in a car that not only did we not have her brand, but we were overcharging her for the ones we did have & she needed more money. I remember thinking that out of all the horrible polyester work uniforms I've ever worn, this gas station's was the most comfortable because it was basically an oversized smock & black cotton biker shorts.

Every time I've called or talked to Jody in the past coupla weeks, she immediately launches into this tirade about not having any money, how their bank account is being closed down, how their car is going to get repossessed, they have no food or groceries, she's lost a bunch of weight because she's starving so Brad can eat... and I keep telling her, "Sorry, I'm broke, too". (I'd have no problem going & buying them some groceries, but I'm kind of incapacitated right now & Rob hasn't gathered up the balls to go to the grocery store himself yet). Then she starts talking about wanting to go back to school to get a psychology degree... but of course, that's on her list of many things she can't afford. I don't think at this point she could even do the work, especially not with on-line classes. Since she's been taking all these muscle relaxants & pain killers, most of the time she's even more incoherent than she's always been, she's gotten shaky and she can barely spell or type. She needs so much help just living her daily life - she needs a nursemaid or something, and neither me nor Terry can give her what she really needs. Yeah, grabbing onto Rob like he was some sort of flotation device to get me out of her house was not the best one of my decisions, but thinking about it now, there's a strong possibility that I'd still be living with Jody, only now I'd be taking care of her full-time. She'd also probably still be living with Tom, & Jamie & Miranda would probably both be in the big, sinking ship with them, instead of making it out alive to have their own lives.

I'm just getting tired of gambling, really. This knee surgery became even more of a gamble once the doctor decided on the microfracture method instead of the transplant. All the time & money I'm dumping into school is seeming more & more like a bad investment. I don't know if I'll be able to recoup my spending once I have the degree... so many places want more than a piece of paper, they want experience backing it up, and I'm stuck at the Excalibur, where the only experience I have is in Excel. I'm still getting older, too, and if my leg doesn't heal right, I'll be crippled on top of it. At least the rest of my body isn't so sore & 'sprung' from the crutches.

Ah well, dark nights of the soul always happen on Tuesday mornings at 5am. Unfortunately, Blizzard started weekly maintenance at 3 this morning, so my dark night of the soul started a little earlier than normally scheduled. Back to "a href'ing" my way across Las Vegas.