Sweet Catastrophe

Surprisingly, I’ve already sort of gotten into a groove for classes. It’ll probably take another week or so before it really feels natural, but at least I don’t feel completely spaced out.

I’ve still got to figure out how to work out breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s just hard to get up early enough. I already have to leave here 20 minutes before any other classes because of how far I have to walk. I need to find out how my first professor feels about munching in class. Now that I know it’s not in a computer lab I may be able to get away with breakfast bars or something. I need to locate the toilets in the Education Center as well. I’m there for almost 4 hours so that’s definitely gonna become a need pretty soon.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my longest days, but they work out okay because I get my bad class out of the way first thing. The rest are probably as enjoyable as a class can be.

MWF I only have one class so I can roll out of bed for that one and by the time I’m truly awake, class is over and it’s time to go home for lunch.

As long as work doesn’t get too rough, I think I’ll survive this semester well enough. We’ll see though. Half challenging classes and half brainless ones. Not exactly the ratio I’d prefer, but it’ll have to do.

Fay is kicking our asses this weekend! It’s been raining steadily since Friday morning. I went to Catie’s to avoid a gathering here at the apartments and I’m glad I did! We lost power around 6 and didn’t get it back until around midnight. There was a whole section that was just completely blacked out. Driving home from Catie’s was a little scary, considering there were no working traffic lights.

We’ve lost a few major restaurant signs around town–three that I know of. Lowe’s had to close early last night. The wind was so bad it was threatening to shatter the doors so they had to get out in the flood and block the doors with stacks of lumber.

Seriously, we haven’t had this much rain in so long; it doesn’t feel like Georgia. I feel like I should have a passport to be here.

I go into work pretty soon and I think it’ll be interesting to see how busy it isn’t. Maybe we’ll get out early tonight too. I won’t count on it though.

I have to say I’m not hating all this rain though. It’s inconvenient, but I still love it.

So this semester I have ACED 4050– Office Management. ACED courses are my computer classes. Whereas this wasn’t a class on the ‘want’ list, it was on the list of classes I wouldn’t mind taking to fill credits.

I’ve also got English 3010– Writing For Business. This is just an overview of proper grammar as well as formats and etiquette in all forms of written business communication. I did everything I could to be moved into the online version of this course, knowing it would be easy, but boring and hard to sit through.

Oh how flipped I had things. It turns out this ACED course is actually a lecture course—and not a good one. It’s boring, and vague….I mean, we’ve already got a paper due on Tuesday with incredibly unclear instructions. I can tell this will be one of those classes that shouldn’t be hard, but will be because it’s hard to understand where the instructor is trying to go. Bring on the stress acne. Ugh and at 9:30 in the morning– in the building I have to walk a mile to get to.

The writing course, on the other hand, is in a computer lab. We had a quiz over the syllabus for bonus points. We sent out an email for our first grade and then we left….like 45 minutes early. He’s a great teacher who knows how basic the subject is and just gets through it, no overworking things.

I’ve heard that the online instructor is actually pretty tough and has already sent out something like 8 full assignments. I got really lucky there, it seems.

OMG!! So everything isn’t set in stone, but Miramax and Elton John’s Rocket Pictures are teaming up to bring us Gnomeo and Juliet!!!! They’re two gnomes in love from rival gardens!

The movie will feature some classic Elton John tunes and possibly some newbies as well.

Negotiations are in the works for James McAvoy and Emily Blunt to play the title characters!!

Gnomes. Romeo & Juliet. Elton John. James McAvoy (and I actually very much love Emily Blunt as well!).

I’m not sure how they could’ve tailored this movie more to my likings…

Expect it in 2010. I need it to happen. Yeah. I do.

Source.

Today I uncovered my first lesson for the semester—It’s Hot.

It’s funny how quickly you can forget that you’re in the sweaty ass crack of Georgia. Just because it’s Fall semester, doesn’t mean we actually get the Fall season here.

We trudge along 4 miles to class because construction is screwing up all the bus routes/stops, escaping through our ipods (at least I am–it keeps me sane), reminding ourselves that there’s no point in getting up an hour early to shower because you’ll just need another one when you get back.

Of course, my Lit class on MWF just happens to be in one of the more cramped, humid rooms of West Hall. Thank God it’s one of my likable teachers lest I fall into some sort of heat coma.

Classes start Monday. I’m thrilled.

I really have no problem with classes, but I hate having to work and go to school. I’m trying really hard to do 15 hours now–if I do, and take two classes next summer then I can graduate next December and be done with this. But doing 15 hours is rough when you add that to working. I stay at about 30 hours a week at work, add on the 15 class hours and then the miscellaneous hours between when I can’t leave campus to do anything else (with travel time, it all adds up to over 5 hours a week) and that’s 50 hours a week. Then any study/homework time necessary. On top of that, I do everything else any other person does–cook meals, grocery shop, clean house, etc…..and try to have some sort of social life? It just sucks.

I don’t want to cut back class hours. I really want to be done by next December. I never expected to go in and have a quick 4 years–I knew I wouldn’t be able to take enough courses to do it and work–but after I had to take a semester off when I had mono and I allowed myself to have really small course loads when registration became a pain and now, I’m just ready to get the hell out. It’s so hard to be motivated when I’m only getting this degree for myself and not for any specific career goal. I don’t want to be in college in 2010. I’m ready to be through.

I can’t cut back on work hours. I pay all my bills. Me. My dad pays my car insurance and that’s it. Rent, utilities, medications, doctor visits, gas, groceries, phone bill, tuition, books…..that’s all me. I can’t afford to take fewer hours. I could’ve had a little help from my dad….maybe, but being independent and out from under his thumb has been worth it….even if I’ll literally be paying for it for pretty much the rest of my life.

Err back to my original point—I hate having work and class. I can stand one or the other, but combining the two, I never have a full day off. There’s always work, or class, or both. On the off chance that I get a Saturday or Sunday off from work during the semester, there’s always something exhausting I have to do.

Life is tiring.

Today’s been a bit of a downer. I woke up to an entry from my friend Andy saying that he was hitting a 3am flight back to Georgia because apparently his sister died in a wreck last night. Just a week after Pete’s anniversary. I know Andy couldn’t look past that. So all day I’ve been hurting for Andy and thinking of Pete and Papa…just can’t shake them off my mind.

It didn’t help when I got to work and saw that somehow, and baby lizard got itself wedged under my hubcap and I couldn’t get him out….he just had to hang there until he died…I have no big problem seeing little dead critters, but not dying ones. It hurt my heart.

Tomorrow will be better.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was set to be out Novemeber 21st–just in time for my Birthday on the 26th.

Well now the bastards have moved it to July 17 2009!! Why? Essentially because the recent strike means a lack of movies ready for summer release next year and they want to take advantage of that….basically more money. Assholes.

Source

EDIT: Hmmm….looks like thanks to this, they moved up the date for Twilight to November 21st. I think I can accept that as a replacement =)

Oy! So, my hard drives are here and so is my second monitor and video card—but of course none of it is turning out to be plug-n-play ready!

As far as the monitor/video card goes, I haven’t talked to Ryan about what he figured out today but it’s either a bad adapter or bad card–both of which are not a big deal. They came from his computer guy here in town so it’ll be taken care of pretty simply.

As for the hard drives, well, I have an E-machine, which is great, I love my computer, but they’re not made for people who know what they’re doing when it comes to hardware. They’re just made to be used as is, not really upgraded. So it’s got all the right hardware for my drives, but it’s not really sure what to do with them =D

Craziness in that it was missing drivers it’s supposed to have to recognize the SATA connections, but of course the ONLY way to install those drivers is within a fresh install of Windows. Great. So essentially I’m reformatting again, only I won’t lose anything. Windows was installed on one of the new hard drives so I can just pull everything off my original. That’s all well and good–I got over the annoyance of that, but after all that was done, it still doesn’t recognize one of the hard drives. Actually I guess I should say it sees the hard drive, knows it’s there, just won’t accept it as a hard drive. Earl (Ryan’s computer guy) is pretty positive he knows what needs to be done, but he won’t be back until Monday.

Since we’re not quite sure what the fix entails, and whether or not Earl may be able to transfer everything exactly without me having to reinstall or reconfigure anything, I’ve been told not to make any changes to anything just now. So for the weekend, it’s basically like I’m borrowing someone else’s computer ’cause I can get to all my stuff, but I can’t really use it.

But I did install Firefox. I’m sorry, I just can’t play with IE all weekend. My excuse is that I had to make sure I had a working backup of my bookmarks ;)

So all night at work I was thinking I’d go home and finally move my computer upstairs. I got home and that really didn’t happen….for a while. Eventually I started getting annoyed with videos that wouldn’t buffer and being in a slow part of my book so I just jumped up and started moving stuff around. I figured if I could just make it to that, “no turning back” point, I’d be good.

I got it all upstairs except the desk gave me a really hard time. It’s not heavy, but it’s awkward, so I ended up having to call Ryan to come home real quick and help since I had it sort of….stuck =D

Had a little trouble getting it to start up the first time….it sort of kept restarting. I think something was just a little loose as it seems to be fine now.

I haven’t gotten all my little extras and stuff upstairs yet, but they’re not essential.

As for being right on time, apparently there’s a Parkview party tomorrow night. Parties are one of the most motivating reasons to move my computer. I’m not a huge party person. At Parkview parties, people are literally in and out, borrowing the restroom or ice, etc…and if I’m sitting at the computer, I’m constantly pausing whatever I’m watching or listening to, and being asked why I’m not hanging out and just being bugged in general. Me no likie. So I’m awfully glad I pushed myself to go ahead and get this done tonight!