It's amazing to me just how quickly a good mood can evaporate when it's already tenuous.
I have been in a pissy mood since yesterday--day three of the headache from hell (now on day four!) was not helping, and other stuff conspired to just make me really angry and upset and frustrated with the world in general. No Wombat and dinner with Brett last night helped, but it carried over into this morning, when I woke up just cranky.
It started to turn around as I was headed out to my car. There's a guy on our floor who has a lovely black lab/retriever mix, and the guy is nice, but the dog is just incredibly friendly and always happy to see you if she knows who you are. They got off the elevator, she stopped by my feet with her tail wagging like mad, he smiled at me and wished me a good morning, and that really lifted my mood in a huge way.
It even carried over into the commute, which is unusual--most often, the dickhead drivers out here leave me frothing about some stupid thing or another by the time I get to work. But this time, that didn't happen, and I was really strangely encouraged by that.
And then, I got to work.
All it took was two emails, one from a developer and one from a client, to suck every last vestige of a good mood out of me and shoot it into outer space. Sigh. It sucks that it happens so quickly.
I've been waiting for grades from winter quarter for the past week, thinking in retrospect that I really should've just given the professor a postcard with my address on it so he could mail it to me. I wasn't sure where my grade would end up, since I missed two classes while I was in Arizona, and that results in an automatic lowering of letter grade by one point. I was wondering how that'd affect my GPA--though, considering that I have now completed 8 credit hours (out of 30 attempted, heh), fussing over GPA is probably pretty stupid, to say the least.
So, this morning the grades came in. And somehow, I pulled out an A. I'm baffled, especially considering what was on the syllabus, and considering that I *know* two of my tests were in the B range, so I was expecting and would've been happy with a B.
But go me. I took a class for a subject I had a hard time doing reading for, had a hard time retaining information from, and I got an A. Woo!
Good god. Now, with apologies to my friends in Europe, because I know that you guys also pay a metric assload for gas, but seriously. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Today, I filled up my 16-gallon gas tank, and paid over $40 to do it. Brett paid almost $50 the other day while we were out for dinner. I was appalled the first time I paid over $30, then over $35, now I'm just kind of outraged--especially since the price of oil has fallen over the past couple of days, but the price of gas has not.
My commute is already only three miles, and I can go weeks without filling up, so I guess maybe I shouldn't bitch much, but still. It's seriously bend over and grab your ankles time.
One of the places that we're looking to move to within the next few months is within walking distance of my office. That will be sweet, then I'll barely use my car at all, heh. I've already had it for more than two years and haven't even broken 19,000 miles.
It's just lots and lots of suck.
So, I have not yet started my journaling for class that's due tomorrow, in large part because the paper says that the composition book that we use is supposed to be black and white. Now, in class, she said something different at first, then kept on the b/w theme on Thursday, so at this point, I'm very kind of sadly bewildered as to what I should really be doing. How pathetic is that? I have this nice little Four Star Mead thingy that's a nice pine green color, but ... pine green isn't black and white. Arg!
I feel stupid for obsessing over such a tiny thing, but the past two classes have taught me, sadly, that it's actually probably not such a bad thing that I am so tweaked about it. That whole subjective grading thing, you know.
Even though it's a ton more expensive, I almost find myself wishing that I were actually attending UoP's Western University thing, as it's all online. However, I also know that online-only classes are bad for me--something about being in the classroom is actually big motivation, and I *need* that big motivation.
So I'll just sit here and obsess about my pine green not black and white journal and put off my assignments until I get the damn thing, because apparently, doing stuff in the current journal and then copying it over later is just something that I cannot wrap my brain around doing.
Sigh. My brain does weird things to me.
I really ought to make a school sub-category, rather than filing it all under the general 'babble' category. Then, I could tag entries appropriately, and anyone who doesn't want to read about my college foo wouldn't have to.
But yes, intrepid freshman went back last night for second day of classes, and of course, this is when the real work started. Geography was interesting, we went over the basics of the study, got some numbers on how big the earth is, talked about the tropics and the poles, and...realized that our teacher is a bit of a fruit bat. She's funny, she's engaging, but she's also kind of pleasantly batty.
English, now...in the first class meeting, the Good Doc told us that we'd do a majority of our work in class. Those who felt they wanted to 'get ahead' by doing the reading and answering some of the study guide questions could do so, but it wasn't a requirement. And yet last night, she asked who had their speech and their ad--things we were supposed to look up during lab time that we haven't had yet.
I'm beginning to think that when she says that she's passing things out for those of who want to 'get ahead,' we should *all* be doing the work to 'get ahead.' So...it's not really homework, but it is, especially since 5 or 10 percent of our grade is a 'teacher subjective' thing, where she looks at our behavior, our class participation, and grades us accordingly. Doing work ahead of time falls under that teacher subjective thing, I'm quite sure, and it's going to be a *lot* of work.
By the same token, it's also very thought provoking and very interesting, so while I will have to bust my ass this quarter, it'll be worth it. I hope. If she doesn't send me off to the loony bin as a gibbering mess.
In other news...
It's been raining today, and very weird. Goes from dribbling to coming straight down in sheets, to blowing to the left, then blowing to the right...it's quite freaky. There's a break in the clouds right now, but it's probably another sucker hole, since I can see more grey to the west.
I am ready for summer. Or, at least, ready for warmer mornings where I don't freeze during my brief walk to the car because it's cold out and my hair's wet.
We'll be having visitors soon--I turned up with extra tickets to Jimmy Buffett, so some friends of ours are going to come down and go to the concert with us. Yay, JB next Saturday!
Work drives me nuts. Whiny people drive me nuts. Nothing is new there.
I'm also baffled by people who continue to ask for help with something, even though I've told them that I either know nothing about what they're asking for help with, or have told them that I won't answer their questions because they don't *need* help if only they'd expend a little bit of effort.
There's a gem show this weekend, but I'm not sure I'm going to go. Money's part of the issue, but I also think that I really need to start cleaning the apartment, and start in on packing. We're not even sure when we're moving yet, or where, just that we are, but...it would save time and frustration later if the non-essential stuff started now.
And...it's FRIDAY!
...is dominatrix, does that mean that the feminine of procrastinator is procrastinatrix?
It's utterly nonsensical, I have no idea why I was thinking about that this morning, and definitely no idea why I even mentioned it now, except that it's still kicking around in my brain. Y'all knew already that I was warped.
- School stuff
My first night of classes was last night, we'll see how it goes. It'll be interesting to be on campus until 10:30 every night, but this quarter, I have two professors who both seem to be very engaging and very interesting, so that's good.
The English writing class is all about (re)learning the lost art of argumentative/persuasive writing, which is something that really interests me. If last night is any indication, her teaching methods will make things a lot of fun, and will take something of a different approach. Some of the people on Rate My Professors have rated her poorly because she uses chakras to teach--this explains the colored markers/highlighters she asked us to get as part of our supply list.
- I cause controversy
One of the things that we have to do in class is to give a researched persuasive speech as part of our final grade. In order to prepare us for this, she had us right down three or four things we were passionate about, and she asked us to read some of them off.
Nope, not gun ownership rights this time, but instead...
"A person's right to die, and the fact that the government should *never* have gotten involved in the Terri Schiavo issue. It should never have been made a lobbying point for politicians or congress, whether republican, democrat, or anywhere in between."
By the horrified gasps from some of my classmates, I think that I will be the source of controversy yet again.
But it does have the makings of a great speech, doesn't it?
- I am horrified
My geography class was actually the first one of the day. By way of introduction, when she called the roll, the teacher asked us to tell her what we'd like to be called, and give her the name of a place we'd like to go but have never been to. When it came around to be my turn, I said, "Pompeii." She said, "Oh, want to see dead bodies buried under rocks and things? Lots of history there!"
Noting the blank looks of most of the rest of the class, she added, "Should we tell them what it is, or should we make them look it up?"
I laughed, but still, I'm also kind of horrified--I mean, I don't expect anyone to know the details about the place, but don't you think that's something they'd have heard of, even once? It was very boggle worthy.
All in all, though, I think I chose well this quarter, both for classes and for instructors. The English class might be a bit different than normal, but still, I'm excited.
As a general rule, I pretty much hate daylight savings time. Losing an hour of my day and having to completely adjust my body's internal clock every spring sucks. It also has some unpleasant associations--my paternal grandmother died just prior to it, so when I was a senior in high school, in addition to having to fly cross country and back while dealing with jet lag, I also had to deal with DST to boot.
This time, it's less stressful, it's just adjusting to the 8-5 schedule rather than the 5-2. It's very sad that waking up at 6:00am feels somehow decadent and sinful. This is only my second day at it, I'm sure things will change the longer I spend, but as it is, around 2:30 or 3 yesterday, I was ready for a nap.
Spring quarter starts today for me, so after work, I'm in class from 6:10 til 10:30.
I also need to get my shit together and start making and taking pictures of jewelry, and putting it all up on the website. There's a gem show this weekend at the San Mateo Expo, so I'm going to go up and replenish some of my supply, then I am going to start working on that more often, dammit. It's so easy to sit back and say, "Oh, I'm tired, I had a long day at work, I'll just do something tomorrow." Tomorrow turns into the next day, which turns into the weekend, which turns into next week, and so forth. I'd planned initially to have the website operational by the end of January, but...um...yeah. It's up! But has next to no content, nor can anyone shop from it. Not good.
An amusing side note from this past weekend: on Sunday, we went to the Great Mall to get a pair of sunglasses for my loving husband, and to see about getting a lightweight jacket for me. He was successful, I was not. We went to Dave and Busters for lunch, and on a whim, we decided to see how many 'Winners Circle' points we'd racked up--turns out we had almost 28,000. We were saving up for a digital video camera (...I know), but since Brett bought one not long ago, that fell by the wayside. We poked around briefly, and almost left without redeeming any of the points--though the GameBoy Advance caught my eye as we were getting ready to leave, and I thought about it. Then, doom.
Brett: "Hey, look, you could get an iPod Shuffle!"
So, to condense an already long story, I spent 25,000 of my D&Bs points and got myself an iPod Shuffle.
Now, if only I could get the )!#(*)^(&!)#& thing to work. Maybe it's the iTunes software rather than the iPod itself, but ease of use is not going to be something I recommend the thing to anyone for. At this rate, they'll be lucky if I decide to recommend it at all. :)