Currents of Time

I'm clearly never going to finish the trip write-up (largely because FUCK HTML) and, honestly, who cares? Here are the (one, two) photo albums on Facebook, if you're actually curious. (Yes, yes, I did finally change my Facebook name to my name. It took less than twelve hours for people I was not friends with in high school to try to friend me. I will probably change it back soon if this keeps up.)

( I will tell the two crazy stories, though! )

SO END THE TRIP HIGHLIGHTS I guess


(no wait one more thing. these are crazy awesome.)


Anyway, last night I was up forever because there was this stupid nasty spider hiding behind my headboard and it was playing peek-a-boo or something because I'd throw a book at it and come away dead-spider-less and it would disappear and I would side-eye the wall for a while, and then look away for a bit and then look back and THERE IT WOULD BE AGAIN rinse repeat and then around 4:15 I cracked and went into the kitchen and got the can of spider killer (last used to purge the baby spiders from the ceiling in the old place, ugh ugh ugh) and sprayed it all over the place behind the headboard and under the bed and everywhere.

And then I had to sit in the other room until it dried and I could go to bed finally at like 5am. It was not fun. And now my internal clock is borked. boo.

A man called my department Friday evening! He wanted to speak to one of my coworkers! The "big, black, kinda muscular man". See, his wife had been in there the other day and met this nice man, and, while she hadn't caught his name, they wanted to take him out for drinks!

So, uh. The bakery staff? 100% white cis female. (The neighboring departments are not all white or all female, but there is still no one in either who even remotely resembles that description.) And he seemed to think he had the correct store.

I kind of began to wonder if he was speaking in some sort of code as the conversation went on. It was a little surreal.


AND NOW more Kingdom Hearts.

( Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days 149 through 224 )

So, we've had a little bit of a thaw. Warm weather is nice. (40 degrees is warm now?) BUT! This means the spiders are crawling out of their creepy spider-holes again. I've pulled a couple out of the bathroom and if I think of it tomorrow, I'm going to just spray the room down with the ANTI-SPIDER CHEMICALS, since that did wonders for my bedroom and the kitchen.

But, uh, I have at least had some revenge on the creepies? My cat apparently will eat them. HA! NOW YOU'RE CAT FOOD. Stay out of my home. >:|

I got a week behind on Top Gear, so I'm watching episode 4 now, and FANDOM COLLISION TWO WEEKS IN A ROW. Week 3 had the Bumblebee Camaro (except it was red so it was totally Cliffjumper) and then this week, the surfing attempts music (Phat Planet, by Leftfield) was also used as the Beast Machines theme. Awesome.


Edit:
THREE IN A ROW! Episode 5 used a music clip from Revenge of the Fallen (specifically "The Fallen"). WTF. XD Now I'm beginning to wonder if I missed something in episodes one and two.
/edit


Anyway, the fuse for the kitchen was blown again tonight (dang, it's been over a year since the last incident. Roommate forgot that microwave + toaster = bad, though, so there it went) and I ended up having to be the one to find and reset the thing. Which wouldn't be so bad, except the basement is some kind of horrific, post-apocalyptic, spider-filled death trap. Seriously, you cannot walk down there. It is just... walls of cobwebbing. And a dirt floor also full of cobwebbing. Not the dirty kind you can spot easily, either. The clean, thin, invisible-unless-the-light-hits-it-just-right kind that you see in places where spiders are thriving.

oh god


so many vibrating spiders


Basically you have to take the broom down and swing it all around in front of you to clear out the messes of webs before you can walk forward. It's pretty gross.



And then I somehow forgot to mention this: Why Beast Wars is awesome. It doesn't mention that the show won an Emmy, but it's still a pretty good breakdown. GO READ IT.

There was a massive trapdoor spider on the kitchen floor earlier tonight. It was watching meeee. Creepy thing. I threw it outside. Spiders go away, please. Never thought I'd miss the cellar/vibrating spiders.


Sorry about the ridiculous amount of angst lately. I was all set to be in a good mood again, my reserves were recharged, and then the news about my great-grandmother came and kind of killed it. I know that's not very interesting, compared to everything everyone else has going on these days.


... On the positive side, my dog is reacting well to the steroids (ie, he can breathe again. For now), so ...maybe he'll make it another year or two?

And then, to completely ruin the mood, I commented that the images of New York, with all the smoke and confetti-bits floating all over in the air, looked a bit apocalyptic. Yes, welcome to 2010. NOW: THE END OF THE WORLD.

AND THEN THERE WAS A MASSIVE PARSON SPIDER (if your spider-loving mother says it's the biggest one she's ever seen, you are allowed to use the word 'massive') IN MY BEDDING. I'm going to hope it was a parting shot from 2009 and not a welcoming from 2010, because otherwise this year and I are going to be on very bad terms.

Overall, though, I think 2009 was pretty good? I managed to spend the vast majority of it living not at home (mostly not on my own, since of course I have a flatmate, even if she has been mostly absent lately~)! I managed to get work (albeit not like a "proper" job but seriously whatever), graduated (again), got health insurance, and did not die when I caught the doom plague in June/July/part of August. I went to Mexico (and there was a plane crash halfway across the continent - the Hudson River landing) and Pasadena (... aaand there was a plane crash halfway across the continent - the Air France thing. Aniko and I were actually watching that on the news as we were flying back). I was fired by my therapist because she thought I could handle the world and so far she's been pretty much correct! I just need to stop being so awful at social interaction (how do you live somewhere for a year and make no new friends? I have managed it...). There was some epic drama, too, but I am trying not to dwell on it.



Uploaded a bunch of pictures from last month to Facebook, featuring cookie baking, Christmas trees, and my dog, mostly. This link might/should work, if you want to see.


THINGS I WANT TO DO THIS YEAR:

- Stop failing at leaving comments (didn't I say this last year? Maybe not. It's something I think about often, but never quite get anywhere with...)! (I AM NOT JOKING I have a folder full of word documents with saved comments, most of them for other people's writing, that I just... do not post. Because I am lame. And paranoid? I dunno.)

- Write more letters. Remember to send them. Would you like one? (Also, I want to get more non-bills mail, but I have no control over that.)

- ...better job? At least start earning more than rent and utilities cost each month? ** UPDATE: one of my coworkers has left and my manager asked me if I wanted more hours. YES YES PLEASE YES So we'll see how this goes...

I guess, maybe. Maybe they lose. How are we defining this? I've become fed up with the random stuff for random people and/or companies I've never heard of that keeps turning up in the PO box, so I finally asked the post office employee if there was something to be done about it, so now we have a sign. [My name] and [Aniko's name] ONLY! It is on a post-it note stuck on the inside wall of the boxes. Hopefully it helps. (I had to do this to the street address mailbox, as well, though I did that one months ago, as the problem was much more severe. I mean, we were getting the previous tenant's phone bills and child support services stuff.) I guess this means that if you were considering sending me anything, make sure you use my proper last name and at least the correct first initial.

I have been informed that a conversation between Transformers movie characters Sam Witwicky + Bumblebee and "GT"-verse Clarkson + Mirage would be hilarious. I am inclined to agree. Commiserating humans and affronted cars? Hard to go wrong. (Then I spent time at work figuring how I'd make "GT" movie-verse compliant. It'd need tweaking in some places, but I don't think it'd be that hard. I'm not actually interested in doing anything with it, but it was good for keeping my brain occupied while I worked.)

And haha, Dissidia is quizzing me on my random Final Fantasy knowledge. This is going to be fun. (HEY, PEOPLE UNFAMILIAR WITH FFXI, which is most of you, when you're synchronizing with Mumor, /dance2 performs the LOVELY MIRACLE WALTZ Dancing Force. The Samba is /dance1 and both 3 and 4 are jigs, but Neo Crystal was 3. And if you don't use "/dance2 motion" everyone will hate you. CHATLOG SPAM GO AWAY)

HEY SPEAKING OF FFXI. RANT:
FFXI ACCOUNT HACKINGS OH BOY. This shit is terrifying to me, okay? I have invested entirely too much time and effort and money augh into my characters, and I love all three of them, and the thought of losing them because of some soulless bastard RMTs is deeply upsetting. I am honestly afraid to log in. I think I joked about that back when SE was handing out seemingly random perma-bans, but during these times, I really do mean it. I desperately want to, to see if my passwords still work, to see if we're all still on Phoenix, to see if we all still have all our items and gil, but these hackings seem to be happening after you log in, which means they may have a virus out there (planted in all the FFXI sites, most likely) that lifts your passwords (including the one-time pass from the security token), or that they've hacked SE's sites or server info. Theories are all over the place. We have no solid information. People with the security tokens are getting hacked. People on the PS2 are getting hacked and that DOESN'T HAPPEN. I don't know, am I willing to risk my account to check my account? Three day weekend coming up, with Labor Day on Monday. Batten down the hatches and brace for impact and hopefully we ride this one out, too. None of us (being my brother, Aniko, and myself) have logged in recently, as far as I know (well, I know my brother and I haven't), so we're safe if it's a virus, but a virus really, really doesn't explain the PS2 hacks. If it's that one of the registration sites has been hacked, we're (or, at least, my brother and I. Aniko has a token) safe, but if SE has been hacked, no one is. I am afraid.

Do not ask why I am awake at this unholy hour.

So, my week. Well, week and a half. My parents had been planning on hopping over to visit my brother for a bit, do some other random sight-seeing things... The dog is old and feeble and requires a lot of special care, and since my parents were having trouble sitting down and deciding on when to go, they didn't bother booking him and the cat at the kennel. They'd actually asked me a bit ago if I could house-and-pet sit while they were out, and I agreed to, on the conditions that they give me enough warning that I could inform my internship people and wrap up any business here in town, and that there be food in the house. Not, you know, meals, but at least ingredients, yeah? So, last Monday circa 7 pm, my mother contacts me over AIM to let me know they're leaving the next morning, surprise.

( So there was that. )

And then, despite having done nothing much beyond sit all week, I turned on the television to set it up to record later and discovered BBC America was just about to run all of Torchwood: Children of Earth and so somehow I ended up watching that. I did remember to record the Doctor Who special that was on after, at least. (My father wanted to see it, but he was too tired after driving all over the place, so instead of him coming over to watch it, his cassette came over, instead. The poor thing is started to wear a bit thing, but I think the image and sound should be okay...?)

AND THEN I got Aniko watching Doctor Who somehow (???) and right now she's watching the end of series two (Doomsday).


In completely unrelated news, today - yesterday? WEDNESDAY - was the last day of my internship! Now I just need to write a paper and get this all in to the instructor somehow. I am very sad it is over, but at the same time, it is kind of nice? Also, once my current round of blisters clears up, then new ones won't appear. Which, you know, bonus.


Still exhausted all the time, but definitely feeling much better. I hope to be done coughing within the next week or so...

Blood-taking-class talk again.

( So, again, don't look if you don't like it. )

There, that was short.

Remember there was a spider? Well, I put it outside, and a massive centipede of death moved in. I actually didn't know it was a centipede at first because I've never seen one that huge. Really, at first I thought it was another spider, because I could only see a little bit of it. No, though. It went outside, too.

And then there was a spider in the garbage this morning and it tried to kill me when I went to pull out some plastic to put it into the (reclaimed! HAHA) recycling bin. I was going to put that one outside, but it insisted on escaping my attempts to can it, so I had to flatten it, lest it escape into the kitchen, which would not be okay. Except now there's a-freaking-nother one up on the wall, near the ceiling where I can't reach it. WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE.

I made noodles with vegetables, chicken, and peanut butter tonight. It is a bit dry, so tomorrow I will make a sauce for it. (I have a recipe for the sauce, at least.) I did this while keeping an eye on the spider. I will blame the spider for the food being dry. Clearly this is the only sane and rational explanation.


Five days left to write a paper and absolutely no motivation. Come oooon, self. That's only half a page a day. You can do this.

...oh god apathy. I love learning, but I'm tired of schoolwork. I am unbelievably tired of schoolwork.


I keep trying to work on a story, but my brain has suddenly flipped into Bad Fic mode. Which basically means I've seen too much badfic and now my brain is plotting how, if at all, some of those ideas could be well-written. Please give up, Brain. You cannot win this battle. What's more, I don't want you to try. At least I know I won't try to write any of it. It's mostly just idle speculation. "Well, maybe it could almost work if.... No, that won't cut it, either...." Face it, Jecca. You hate that plot and will never be able to deal with it. It will never make sense to you. Please stop.


(I HAVE BEEN TALKING OUT LOUD TO MYSELF ALL DAY. The spider on the wall probably thinks I'm completely mad.)

So, I've not mentioned, but my parents have been away for the past while. They're getting back in a few hours. Family reunion/birthday party/thingamathing, in Maryland. My brother and I did not go, because we don't know the people who are there, because we have work and I was supposed to have classes for some of it, and because PLEASE JUST I NEED SOME TIME TO NOT BE RUNNING AROUND AAAUGH and because like hell am I spending three days in a car driving all over New England looking at scenery because my father wanted to take the extremely long way. I told Mom that if the police call to tell me one or both of my parents are dead, I'd understand and we wouldn't judge her. She was very grateful.

But it's been exciting while they've been gone! Something new is wrong with the dog, the lawn mower broke (again, we just had the stupid thing fixed), my brother was aggro'd by a wasp and I had to tell him how/help to treat it, then a wasp came into the house (apparently not done with him), there was a daddy-longlegs the size of, I don't know, Africa or something in the bathroom (SERIOUSLY, AT LEAST AS BIG AS MY PALM), but then it migrated to the stairwell (and now it's disappeared), there was a massive spider in the sink in the upstairs bathroom, the moth eggs on the kitchen window hatched, life threw a major curveball at my head, but the only surprising parts about it were the ones you wouldn't think were surprising (ha, the typically surpising bit ... wasn't. Okay, part of it was slightly. Mostly it was awkward and a bit embarrassing, oh, dear) (AND OF COURSE the parts that reasonably could be freaking me out aren't and the ones that really shouldn't are. Self, you are so uselessly inept at everything), and a bunch of other bizarre stuff (like it hasn't rained the entire time they've been gone. This is a record for Days It Has Not Rained This Summer). Also I stole my brother's .dat swap to make Mithra stand in the better position.

I think mostly I was posting because "wasp aggro" sounds funny. SO YES. Today my brother was stung by a wasp while trying to mow the lawn, after the good mower broke. We took broken mower + wasp sting as signs of divine intervention and decided he was not supposed to be mowing. So he stopped.

The wasp that came crawling in (literally) is still trapped under a cup on the floor. Actually, it hasn't been moving. I think it might be dead.

ALSO NABIKI WAS JUST NOW EATEN TO DEATH BY A VERY SCARY NOTORIOUS MONSTER. Then it came and air-swam at me, but then we docked in Nashmau right as it came to murder me and I LIVE! bwaha.

(Speaking of booms, it is still storming every day.)


My brother's chocobo made me cry today.


Anyway, combat racing. Convenient thing about racing games: when you are studying for a chemistry test and need a fifteen minute break, you can run a race or two and be completely satisfied that you've accomplished something, and still have time to go grab a glass of water or something to eat.

( The percentage tells me I'm 1/4 of the way through. )

( We all know what the second cut is for by now, don't we? )

I won't be surprised if it gets harder from here on out.