(no subject)
Nov. 16th, 2004 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaMmm, Co-Cola. This is the one good thing I have had today.
So I went to bed at midnight last night because I was sick of my presentation and everyone and myself, on the understanding that I get up at 5 and finish it. So I wake up in a cold sweat at 5 am all like "AUGH PRESENTATION ACK," and I feel really ill about it--like, I was pretty sure I just felt queasy about class, but who knows? Maybe I'm coming down with Sister Girl's Death Flu. Maybe random acts of emesis (tm fanofall) loom large in my future, I don't know! I don't know! So I presentationate until 8 am, when I jump in the shower, because my hair is curly and needs at least two hours to really air-dry before I break out the hair dryer, or all the curl goes thin and frizzy. So I'm in the shower and I swear, I have the biggest most awful rat's-nest tangle in the history of ever. But detanglenating only takes twenty minutes, so I bust downstairs for a quick breakfast of waffles and, after ascertaining that Luis Guzmán is not lurking anywhere near, I open the freezer door and BAM this carton of homemade ninja spaghetti sauce leaps out and tries to kill me ("I KEEL YOU!") with, like, its frozen heft ("BANZAI!"). So I do what anyone would do when faced with a sauce assassin--shriek and flail--and boxes of eggrolls and tubs of ice cream go flying and by the time I find the waffles, the two pomeranians are playing tug-of-war with the box under the kitchen table ("Rrrrr!" "Rrrrr!"). So finally clean up the wreckage and toast myself some damn waffles and go back upstairs and struggle with the conclusion. And then... I go downstairs to print at 9:45.
I think you all know where this is going.
That printer hates. me. But my parents fixed it and loaded it and beat it into submission and said, "Whenever you're ready, it's good to go." I go down with a diskette forty-five minutes before I have to leave. I am going to print two copies of my paper presentation, one to give to the professor and one to read from, and 12 copies of a handy handout on Persephone and Pomona, because I don't have to have a handout but everyone else has, and I think it would be particularly useful to make sure we go over the two main mythological figures in my Paradise Lost paper because--well, you know how part of the professional tone of an academic paper is the assumption that you don't have to explain every little thing? Like, the way you don't do plot synopsis because you're assuming that if you, some random academic, are reading an academic paper on Paradise Lost, you've read the damn epic? Yes, well. I didn't want to hit the part in the paper where I assume you're fairly acquainted with the gist of the Persephone/Hades/Demeter myth, and if you aren't, you can open a damn dictionary at that point, which you can't do if you're just sitting in a classroom listening (OH MY GOD I'M RAMBLING SEND HELP). So, wahey! Handout. Yeah. I got downstairs and pulled up "My Computer" on my parents' PC, you know, to get to the A drive and all, and the computer's all like, "My Who?" No, seriously, dude, this isn't funny. "My What?" NO, DUDE, NO. And you know how when the computer is trying to pull up the icons a little flashlight waves back and forth? Yeah. It did that for ten minutes straight. I am freaking out for real. I reboot the computer a couple of times and switch users and log out and do all kinds of technological hokey-pokey and the printer's just sitting there like a happy dog, like, "Hi! I'm ready! Let's go! Where's your stuff!" So finally, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I call Mom at 10 am and ask her to print me the two copies of the paper, since she was going to drop by the house anyway, and she comes through for me. But I felt so bad about it that I didn't ask her to do the 12 handouts.
AND THEN I CANNOT FIND MY SHOES. OH MY GOD WILL THIS NEVER END. Finally I turn around and my shoes are all under the desk like HEE HEE. Not funny, dudes.
So I get to class and I let Boyce go first--it's me, Boyce, and Laurel (the Laurel whose children's book I need to critique for her already omg). He sounds a little nervous reading and I'm all jarred and jittery from, you know, several attempts on my life and sanity and I'm thinking to myself, Look, you have lived through worse than this. You have given presentations like this IN SPANISH. You have run open-mike nights at the college coffee house. Everyone out there is even more nervous about this than you are. And the ones who aren't nervous because they aren't presenting are just bored. They totally don't care. They're not going to notice if you stammer. Just get up there and rock this bitch. You know you can.
I did not get up there and rock that bitch. I tripped over my words a lot and stammered and that annoys the living piss out of me because I am totally not like that when I'm just talking in class discussion. And the thing had to be twelve minutes and I knew I was never going to make that on the paper alone, so I got up there--and this is a small, friendly class, so I wasn't so much worried about that--and said, "I, uh, okay. I'm kind of sad today because my handouts died in a fiery paper jam and, so, I don't have any. But we really need to go over the information that was on them because I'm going to touch on about four mythological figures in the paper and I want to make sure you're with me when I get there." And Clifton, My Gay Boyfriend, starts laughing in the back of the room when I get to "fiery paper jam." Now, I know I'm not the only person who does this, but--you know how when you tell a story you kind of tell what you were thinking or what you would have liked to have said? Like, "And then I was like, Bitch, are you for real?," when what you really said was, "Sure, you can cut in front of me in line (Please don't cut me I want to live)"? Yeah. See, no. I really said this. And you'll notice I didn't tell the absolute truth, but that's because I would have blathered on like I did three paragraphs ago, and that just makes you look like a loser with a lot of excuses. You have to get your quip on and get out of there as quick as possible. So the Invisible Handout seemed to go over well, and I think I passed twelve minutes on the strength of that. And when we had open Q&A at the end, the professor immediately wanted to talk about my presentation, and, like, not in a predatory "weak gazelle in the herd" kind of way, and I am pretty sure that I actually rocked that bitch because I'm fine if we're just talking, so I think it went all right.
Sigh.
Yay, Amazing Race tonight!
I'm not too impressed with the season 6 competitors, but okay. I wasn't impressed with the beginning of season 5, and look how that turned out. Fortunately Veronica Mars does not come on tonight, but the part of my heart that I reserve for television is broken that VM and TAR are running against each other. I'm probably going to end up taping VM so I can watch it more thoroughly--actually, Mom has shown some interest in TiVo (YUSS!), but we'll see about that. The upside of this is that I will continue tobug you to watch Veronica Mars recap the show, and I will not start recapping The Amazing Race. This is for two reasons: 1) I'm overextended as it is, and 2) TAR is Miss Alli's territory. It's one thing to start writing about two new shows that don't have a long-standing association with a particular recapper, shows you like and end up getting sucked into recapping them just because you love them that much. It's another to tread on the territory of a woman who has her own final-episode-watching convention, attended by contestants past and present and Phil, for God's sake. I don't play that.
Also, now that I am reviving the "MY OX IS BROKEN" icon, I totally need to think of something to do for a Veronica icon.
ETA: Awwww, hell. My icons are expired. Be right back.
So I went to bed at midnight last night because I was sick of my presentation and everyone and myself, on the understanding that I get up at 5 and finish it. So I wake up in a cold sweat at 5 am all like "AUGH PRESENTATION ACK," and I feel really ill about it--like, I was pretty sure I just felt queasy about class, but who knows? Maybe I'm coming down with Sister Girl's Death Flu. Maybe random acts of emesis (tm fanofall) loom large in my future, I don't know! I don't know! So I presentationate until 8 am, when I jump in the shower, because my hair is curly and needs at least two hours to really air-dry before I break out the hair dryer, or all the curl goes thin and frizzy. So I'm in the shower and I swear, I have the biggest most awful rat's-nest tangle in the history of ever. But detanglenating only takes twenty minutes, so I bust downstairs for a quick breakfast of waffles and, after ascertaining that Luis Guzmán is not lurking anywhere near, I open the freezer door and BAM this carton of homemade ninja spaghetti sauce leaps out and tries to kill me ("I KEEL YOU!") with, like, its frozen heft ("BANZAI!"). So I do what anyone would do when faced with a sauce assassin--shriek and flail--and boxes of eggrolls and tubs of ice cream go flying and by the time I find the waffles, the two pomeranians are playing tug-of-war with the box under the kitchen table ("Rrrrr!" "Rrrrr!"). So finally clean up the wreckage and toast myself some damn waffles and go back upstairs and struggle with the conclusion. And then... I go downstairs to print at 9:45.
I think you all know where this is going.
That printer hates. me. But my parents fixed it and loaded it and beat it into submission and said, "Whenever you're ready, it's good to go." I go down with a diskette forty-five minutes before I have to leave. I am going to print two copies of my paper presentation, one to give to the professor and one to read from, and 12 copies of a handy handout on Persephone and Pomona, because I don't have to have a handout but everyone else has, and I think it would be particularly useful to make sure we go over the two main mythological figures in my Paradise Lost paper because--well, you know how part of the professional tone of an academic paper is the assumption that you don't have to explain every little thing? Like, the way you don't do plot synopsis because you're assuming that if you, some random academic, are reading an academic paper on Paradise Lost, you've read the damn epic? Yes, well. I didn't want to hit the part in the paper where I assume you're fairly acquainted with the gist of the Persephone/Hades/Demeter myth, and if you aren't, you can open a damn dictionary at that point, which you can't do if you're just sitting in a classroom listening (OH MY GOD I'M RAMBLING SEND HELP). So, wahey! Handout. Yeah. I got downstairs and pulled up "My Computer" on my parents' PC, you know, to get to the A drive and all, and the computer's all like, "My Who?" No, seriously, dude, this isn't funny. "My What?" NO, DUDE, NO. And you know how when the computer is trying to pull up the icons a little flashlight waves back and forth? Yeah. It did that for ten minutes straight. I am freaking out for real. I reboot the computer a couple of times and switch users and log out and do all kinds of technological hokey-pokey and the printer's just sitting there like a happy dog, like, "Hi! I'm ready! Let's go! Where's your stuff!" So finally, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I call Mom at 10 am and ask her to print me the two copies of the paper, since she was going to drop by the house anyway, and she comes through for me. But I felt so bad about it that I didn't ask her to do the 12 handouts.
AND THEN I CANNOT FIND MY SHOES. OH MY GOD WILL THIS NEVER END. Finally I turn around and my shoes are all under the desk like HEE HEE. Not funny, dudes.
So I get to class and I let Boyce go first--it's me, Boyce, and Laurel (the Laurel whose children's book I need to critique for her already omg). He sounds a little nervous reading and I'm all jarred and jittery from, you know, several attempts on my life and sanity and I'm thinking to myself, Look, you have lived through worse than this. You have given presentations like this IN SPANISH. You have run open-mike nights at the college coffee house. Everyone out there is even more nervous about this than you are. And the ones who aren't nervous because they aren't presenting are just bored. They totally don't care. They're not going to notice if you stammer. Just get up there and rock this bitch. You know you can.
I did not get up there and rock that bitch. I tripped over my words a lot and stammered and that annoys the living piss out of me because I am totally not like that when I'm just talking in class discussion. And the thing had to be twelve minutes and I knew I was never going to make that on the paper alone, so I got up there--and this is a small, friendly class, so I wasn't so much worried about that--and said, "I, uh, okay. I'm kind of sad today because my handouts died in a fiery paper jam and, so, I don't have any. But we really need to go over the information that was on them because I'm going to touch on about four mythological figures in the paper and I want to make sure you're with me when I get there." And Clifton, My Gay Boyfriend, starts laughing in the back of the room when I get to "fiery paper jam." Now, I know I'm not the only person who does this, but--you know how when you tell a story you kind of tell what you were thinking or what you would have liked to have said? Like, "And then I was like, Bitch, are you for real?," when what you really said was, "Sure, you can cut in front of me in line (Please don't cut me I want to live)"? Yeah. See, no. I really said this. And you'll notice I didn't tell the absolute truth, but that's because I would have blathered on like I did three paragraphs ago, and that just makes you look like a loser with a lot of excuses. You have to get your quip on and get out of there as quick as possible. So the Invisible Handout seemed to go over well, and I think I passed twelve minutes on the strength of that. And when we had open Q&A at the end, the professor immediately wanted to talk about my presentation, and, like, not in a predatory "weak gazelle in the herd" kind of way, and I am pretty sure that I actually rocked that bitch because I'm fine if we're just talking, so I think it went all right.
Sigh.
Yay, Amazing Race tonight!
I'm not too impressed with the season 6 competitors, but okay. I wasn't impressed with the beginning of season 5, and look how that turned out. Fortunately Veronica Mars does not come on tonight, but the part of my heart that I reserve for television is broken that VM and TAR are running against each other. I'm probably going to end up taping VM so I can watch it more thoroughly--actually, Mom has shown some interest in TiVo (YUSS!), but we'll see about that. The upside of this is that I will continue to
Also, now that I am reviving the "MY OX IS BROKEN" icon, I totally need to think of something to do for a Veronica icon.
ETA: Awwww, hell. My icons are expired. Be right back.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 05:12 pm (UTC)Any word on medical things?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 05:17 pm (UTC)lossesI mean, insane morning. And damn, but do I wish we had things like ice cream and frozen waffles and egg rolls in our freezer on a regular basis. RAAAAH.But the best part of this whole entry, the line that totally cracked my shit up? "Finally I turn around and my shoes are all under the desk like HEE HEE. Not funny, dudes."
Just in case it hasn't been said enough? You are so my hero.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 05:28 pm (UTC)Dude, I can so sympathize re: firey paper jam. For my science fair project last year, (which reminds me that this year's project is due in TWO WEEKS OH CRAP), we had to have all of our abstract typed and...my printer didn't like that. At all. It came out a jumbled mess of which basically said, "We laugh at your sorrow, Arayuldaiel".
You so need to break out the 'Broken Ox' icon. It's gold, I tell you.
Oh man...
Date: 2004-11-16 05:43 pm (UTC)Printer is busy, bitch.
Nu-uh. Liar.
Just hang in there. Those evil printers are sorta like Dracula, exept the only thing that will make it work is a werewolf bite. (I hope)
tivo
Date: 2004-11-16 06:12 pm (UTC)Re: tivo
Date: 2004-11-16 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 06:23 pm (UTC)And my stupid boyfriend is watching something on VH1 on how sexy the 80's was. Nuh-uh.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 08:00 pm (UTC)But glad you rocked it at the end. Go cleo, go cleo!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 08:48 pm (UTC)Also? The shoes? Funniest thing I've read all day.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 08:57 pm (UTC)Once I was trying to print out the final exam for my junior English Lit class, which I had ready 24 hours early for goodness sake, and a combination of printer evil and computer virus meant that I ran into the classroom with the exam papers 25 minutes late. There was a while when I was actually considering writing the thing out by hand for them. Maybe I should have done it. Oh well, amazingly, I didn't lose my job (but it was close.)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 09:19 pm (UTC)You made my day so much better by making me laugh.
this shoddy ox is still broken
Date: 2004-11-16 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 11:40 pm (UTC)Thank you. :)
Jessika.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 01:09 am (UTC)This is exactly and specifically true and I do it too. I feel kinda guilty because technically it's lying but it gets the same basic information across without a lot of dithering, which is really the main thing.
The rest of this entry made me laugh until I was in pain. Except what's this Broken Ox business? I'm curious.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-18 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 06:16 am (UTC)i would've curled up into a small ball and screamed my lungs out...
i hope you get news for the med-guys soon cause *eech* i couldn't wait that long... i think i would haunt them with calls every 5mins or so...
hope you have a good day...
cheers
Lorien__
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 06:42 am (UTC)Yes..and then..and then..then..War and Peace! Um. Or Anna Karenina, which my Russian prof was always pimping over W and P. Whichever. Homer's Idiot and The Oddity. Wait, that's too close to Troy, most likely. Eh..Dicken's Bleak House?
Oh, well. Nevermind.
Yarha, Epitastic! (Which is Not Epitasis (http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=epitasis))
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 08:48 am (UTC)check it here: http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml
Re: Curly Hair
Date: 2004-11-17 11:35 am (UTC)Anyways... just a few "beauty" tips for you there... I know how hard curly hair is to take care of.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 12:51 pm (UTC)Did you ever see "Love, Actually"?
If so, what did you think of it?
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 07:05 pm (UTC)