The headaches, the cramps . . . in one’s patience, er, muscle, the near-hemorrhaging . . . of money. Okay, so the metaphor is pretty warped to begin with. That’s what happens when you start with the title and try to make the first line match. I don’t recommend it.

The point is, my registration window for next semester opened at 1:30 this afternoon. Most of the classes I need at this point are upper-division and won’t fill up anyway, but after all the crap I’ve been through with registration at this school, I’d rather get everything nailed down as soon as I can.

(more…)

. . . which is why you get a crap post like this one. Why is my head fuzzy?! This upsets me.

I need to go to bed soon, or else I’ll get into a cycle where I feel crummy, so I’m afraid to go to sleep, so I stay up, but then I end up feeling worse, and the tiredness makes the crazy stronger, so then I’m REALLY afraid to sleep, and this goes on and on until I get so tired that I fall asleep in spite of myself, usually at some obscenely late hour with the lights on and a book on my face.

The weather’s supposed to turn wintry tomorrow after what’s been a pleasant Fall in the low 80s. I wore a short skirt today to say farewell to decent temperatures. Once it drops into the 60s, I’m not a outdoors fan any more.

(more…)

There’s a big new-ish building on campus called “Science Building.” Now, I’m a science major, and as far as I know this building has existed all four semesters I’ve been here, but before today I’d never been inside. I wondered what mysteries lay within its walls that no one had bothered to tell a lowly undergrad like me about.

Today I got to go in. Not that I wasn’t allowed to before, but today I had a reason to. After one class I went back with the professor to his office (which was in the “Science Building”—who knew?) to pick up a test I’d missed getting back when I was out sick.

(more…)

I am teaching four nights, three in a row. It would’ve been five, thanks to Humberto, but I will be blissfully unavailable on account of a long-scheduled tutoring lesson.

My car is sick. Have I mentioned this? Possibly. It started making a funny noise, and then the check engine light came on. It went into the shop today, and the mechanic said not only did he not hear a noise, but when he drove it around a bit, the check engine light turned off. THERE WAS A NOISE. I am not a hypochondriac about my car. Okay, maybe a little bit, but seriously, it was whirring and clicking. Abnormally.

(more…)

I seem to have strained my eyes, or at least that’s what it feels like. For the last little while, any time I’m on the computer for more than an hour I get headaches and feel nauseated. I feel that way now, in fact, so there won’t be much more of this typing thing. It’s as good an excuse as any to go to bed—I’m a little behind on sleep.*

My point, I think, is that this is frustrating. It means I’ll have to start making blog-reading the LAST thing I do when I sit down at the computer, not the first, otherwise I’ll spend my hour or more without accomplishing anything. Sigh. My life is so hard.

(more…)

I didn’t know a locksmith could make a key just by looking at the tumblers in a lock. I learned this interesting fact after my car key disappeared into the Raging River at Schlitterbahn* (it fell out of John’s velcro-ed pocket somewhere along the 45-minute ride). At the end of the day we called the locksmith, and an hour and 75 dollars later, I had two new keys to my car, inferior to the original key only in their lack of nice plastic heads and the ability to unlock the trunk. I also learned that the locks on my car are just for decoration and serve no practical purpose. It’s nice that no one has been seriously inclined** to steal my old newspapers, broken pencils, or radio.

I also didn’t know that asphalt takes less than a day to set. The parking lot in front of my apartment complex was repaved yesterday morning, and when I got home last night it was open again, cars parked on it and everything.

(more…)

Teaching from 6:00 to 9:30 on back-to-back nights when you have class during the day from 11:00 to 5:30 can be rough. At least I don’t have to stand up the whole time in order to learn. Sam, I think, would also prefer that I not be gone so long. Yesterday morning when I left he hid under the bed and barely looked at me when I said goodbye. This morning was better: he still stared at the ground in that depressed-but-adorable mood of his, but at least he let me rub his ears a little.

School is school. Most of my classes seem like they’ll be good ones. A couple are great, a couple crummy. I’m still waiting on my overload petition to go through—I’ll go in and bother the receptionist again tomorrow.

(more…)

Man, that was a great vacation. There’s too much to tell here, especially in my current state of exhaustion, in which I’ll be fortunate if I’m coherent enough to spell all the words right in these few sentences.

Driving home from vacation is usually a bit sad, especially when you can feel your week of fun outdoorsy bondy time dissolving into a semester of school and work and chores and commitments.

(more…)

To my Art History professor:

I know that it’s convenient to give sensible names to the image files you use on your tests, but are you aware that a test-taker can pull up those names by right-clicking on the images? When you write a question, for instance, that asks “Whose archaeological dig is this?” and the picture is titled Schliemann.jpg, that question becomes somewhat less difficult. I only found this technique helpful on four questions out of fifty, though, so it’s no crisis or anything, just funny.

You do seem to be in the habit of giving forehead-slapping hints* to most of your test and quiz questions, though, dragging students to the right answers by force, so maybe this was intentional.

(more…)

I’m taking eighteen hours right now. The upside of this is that five of my six classes are online, so I only have eight inflexible hours a week. That also means I have only eight hours to spend in the presence of my classmates.

I have no problem with most of the folks in my class. I like people, really, I do. But there are always those few, you know? Or at least those few behaviors, the ones that drive me batty. Like people coming in late*. People leaving early. People packing up their stuff, loudly, before the professor is done lecturing. People stopping a fast-paced lecture to ask question after question after question until we’re thirty miles off-topic. People talking amongst themselves during class. People’s phones ringing during class.

(more…)