I'd say this has been a pretty good weekend.
Friday I sent some vital emails and things, called the bank and tried to get as much of my errand-y stuff out of the way. Then I went to Ross and got two new pairs of capris and a racerback bra to replace the one that broke over a year ago. When I got home I did laundry, and tidied up between load changes.
So I've called the bank, done my laundry, I'm leaving clean sheets on my bed for my return, I have my account details written down and printed out for my carryon...I need to go shopping for a TSA lock for my bag tomorrow, and pack everything up and I think I'm good. I still have no idea what I'm wearing on the plane and if I'm going to wear makeup or not. I think I will wear makeup, mostly because I'm being picked up by a car service. Gotta look like I belong!
Friday night my neighbor was throwing a party (he lives downstairs) so I went there after I ate dinner and showered and ended up eating a second dinner (he was barbecuing) and staying there until the party fizzled out at 5 am.
Mom called me early Saturday morning, which I didn't see until 11:30 am when I roused up a little. I called her back and she asked if I had only just woken up, and I said yes, I'd been at a party til 5 am - and she just said, oh that's nice, did you have fun? You can see how much her education has advanced since I started at UF five years ago :) Of course, it's pretty awesome to go to a party downstairs where all you have to do when you're drunk and tired and want to go home is climb some stairs, wash your face, drink some water and pass out in your own soft cuddly bed.
I stayed in bed until about 2 when I got up and showered and got dressed. I left for my friend Adam's party at 3 (had to stop by Trader Joe's first so I could bring some cookies as a host gift) and stayed there til 7:30. It was a fun party, Adam grilled a ton of meat for tacos (the chicken was really really good) and we all drank beer and talked nonsense all afternoon. I also got directions to a local Chinese restaurant that apparently has some of the best duck in town for an affordable price, so I'm checking that out the second I get back in town.
I left at 7:30 to go to a play - Mandragola by Machiavelli - that's being put on by the Long Beach Shakespeare Company. The playhouse is only a few miles from Adam's place so I got there in plenty of time before the play started at 8.
I'm a purist (aka total snob) about old plays and I really resent any liberties or rewriting, which is probably why I wasn't crazy about this. It certainly had its moments, and was much better than that appalling rendition of Eurydice that I saw in Gainesville...but at the same time the rewritten dialogue was more Modern Family than Machiavelli, and the musical numbers really got up my nose.
I did appreciate the almost Puckish irreverence that characterized the interactions of the male members of the cast... The three female members (one of which was made up as a man, and played a male character, but was clearly classed as a woman during the musical numbers) had less face time and weren't really given much chance to establish themselves as anything the male characters didn't say about them.
I still enjoyed myself, although I'm starting to think I'll never see the ancient plays the way I want to see them.
I got a chickenburger and fries on the way home for dinner (I only have two eggs, yoghurt, carrots, some rice, and shrimp left in my fridge, which are going to be my breakfast, lunch and dinner tomorrow) and I'm now comfortably ensconced in my chair. I think I'm going to take off my makeup and curl up with my kindle for a little while before I go to bed.
Tomorrow is going to be a really busy day, with last minute-errands and packing and all that...and then I get to go home Monday!! There's no place like home :)
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
So close, and yet so far
So I haven't posted in awhile.
The past few days have been me slowly acclimating to a slower pace, getting work done for my boss, and trying to organize my summer. My mail is officially getting forwarded for a few weeks, so now I just have to call and warn the bank, start packing, pay two months' rent, and put together a travel folder so I can pay all my bills even though I'll be away.
Oh, and I've finally been catching up on sleep.
The bad news is that the uni group that's supposed to award travel refunds to students who presented at conferences have delayed their award announcements - and until you've gotten your announcement that you're being awarded a refund, you can't turn in your receipts. And if you don't turn in your receipts, they won't give you the money. I leave May 30th, and pretty much all of my coworkers/classmates leave between May 27th and June 1st for work and field school, so unless those people get back to us by, like, yesterday...we're kinda screwed.
Why tell us you're going to refund us a portion of the hundreds of dollars we spent (you don't get any money back for food - just gas/taxi/hotel/parking sort of thing) if you're going to wimp out and not do it?
I would LOVE there to be some sort of academic court where you can hold universities accountable for their promises. Of course, they'd just make the fine print even longer and more obstructive than they already do, because of the prevailing negative opinions towards graduate students, but still. It's a lovely dream!
I have a lot of mending to do and I haven't done any of it. I have a lot of dieting to do and haven't been following it. I have been sleeping and eating and writing and reading and talking and listening and watching tv...
Yeah, haven't really got anything left to say.
The past few days have been me slowly acclimating to a slower pace, getting work done for my boss, and trying to organize my summer. My mail is officially getting forwarded for a few weeks, so now I just have to call and warn the bank, start packing, pay two months' rent, and put together a travel folder so I can pay all my bills even though I'll be away.
Oh, and I've finally been catching up on sleep.
The bad news is that the uni group that's supposed to award travel refunds to students who presented at conferences have delayed their award announcements - and until you've gotten your announcement that you're being awarded a refund, you can't turn in your receipts. And if you don't turn in your receipts, they won't give you the money. I leave May 30th, and pretty much all of my coworkers/classmates leave between May 27th and June 1st for work and field school, so unless those people get back to us by, like, yesterday...we're kinda screwed.
Why tell us you're going to refund us a portion of the hundreds of dollars we spent (you don't get any money back for food - just gas/taxi/hotel/parking sort of thing) if you're going to wimp out and not do it?
I would LOVE there to be some sort of academic court where you can hold universities accountable for their promises. Of course, they'd just make the fine print even longer and more obstructive than they already do, because of the prevailing negative opinions towards graduate students, but still. It's a lovely dream!
I have a lot of mending to do and I haven't done any of it. I have a lot of dieting to do and haven't been following it. I have been sleeping and eating and writing and reading and talking and listening and watching tv...
Yeah, haven't really got anything left to say.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
California skies and Mississippi mud
I woke up this morning to the pitter-patter of raindrops streaming down my windows. I got up to admire it, but soon retired to bed again where, aided and abetted by my kindle, I stayed until noon. It reminded me of The Egg and I when Betty MacDonald said staying in bed late on her chicken farm made her feel like "a cross between a boll-weevil and a slut." Personally, I just felt like a cat, getting to do exactly as I pleased. If I get to be reincarnated I'm coming back as a cat, preferably one belonging to someone particularly indulgent in regards to tuna and cream.
When I finally got up and had lunch (chow mein) I got dressed and tidied up the apartment a little before going to CVS and getting a bunch of pre-strung flossers (I don't like them, they break all the time, but I can't find one of those heavy-duty reusable flossers there), a pair of toothbrush traveling cases, and a tooth-whitening kit. I nearly got the cheaper kit with dissolving strips, but I really don't like the idea of dissolving strips, especially as you're not supposed to touch your teeth with your tongue for 15 minutes after they've dissolved. Anyone who knows me knows I'd forget and that'd be a total waste of my precious money!
I haven't whitened my teeth for a year and I'm going to give the (non-dissolving) strips a try, since my dentist said they're more effective than the trays (which I tried previously) and irritate peoples' gums less. When I used the trays I had to take a 3 day break in the middle because my gums were so irritated and sore.
So now I'm sitting here in my armchair, feet up on my deskchair, listening to jazz and blues and swing (thank you, internet radio)while admiring the view of the tree outside my window and the brilliantly blue California sky beyond it.
I thought about going to the beach, but that would require taking my car out and I'm trying to use as little gas as possible, so I won't have to fill up before I leave for Orlando. Which reminds me, I need to book the car service to to drop me off at the airport when I leave and pick me up when I return.
Being grown-up and going on vacation is stressful in itself. If you're going to a far-away airport and your friends are all out of town, do you risk a taxi or book a car service? How do you ensure your bills will be paid on time? (I was going to send them extra money to give me a positive balance to deduct from while I was away, but I couldn't contact them about it, so I'm just writing down their internet paying methods and will pay over the internet, extra fees be damned!) What do you bring with you? How do you protect what you leave behind?
Of course I have it a little easier than most because I'm taking everything valuable with me, but still. It's a pain.
My place is still a little messy but I'm feeling disinclined to clean it further, although I do have the windows open to let out the smell of stale Chinese food, and the fan whirring lazily overhead.
Tomorrow I have to get back to work on my 510 final and my job, so I am enjoying today with all my might. Do I read more books? Do I work on my manuscripts? Or should I just sit here with my feet up and do absolutely nothing?
When I finally got up and had lunch (chow mein) I got dressed and tidied up the apartment a little before going to CVS and getting a bunch of pre-strung flossers (I don't like them, they break all the time, but I can't find one of those heavy-duty reusable flossers there), a pair of toothbrush traveling cases, and a tooth-whitening kit. I nearly got the cheaper kit with dissolving strips, but I really don't like the idea of dissolving strips, especially as you're not supposed to touch your teeth with your tongue for 15 minutes after they've dissolved. Anyone who knows me knows I'd forget and that'd be a total waste of my precious money!
I haven't whitened my teeth for a year and I'm going to give the (non-dissolving) strips a try, since my dentist said they're more effective than the trays (which I tried previously) and irritate peoples' gums less. When I used the trays I had to take a 3 day break in the middle because my gums were so irritated and sore.
So now I'm sitting here in my armchair, feet up on my deskchair, listening to jazz and blues and swing (thank you, internet radio)while admiring the view of the tree outside my window and the brilliantly blue California sky beyond it.
I thought about going to the beach, but that would require taking my car out and I'm trying to use as little gas as possible, so I won't have to fill up before I leave for Orlando. Which reminds me, I need to book the car service to to drop me off at the airport when I leave and pick me up when I return.
Being grown-up and going on vacation is stressful in itself. If you're going to a far-away airport and your friends are all out of town, do you risk a taxi or book a car service? How do you ensure your bills will be paid on time? (I was going to send them extra money to give me a positive balance to deduct from while I was away, but I couldn't contact them about it, so I'm just writing down their internet paying methods and will pay over the internet, extra fees be damned!) What do you bring with you? How do you protect what you leave behind?
Of course I have it a little easier than most because I'm taking everything valuable with me, but still. It's a pain.
My place is still a little messy but I'm feeling disinclined to clean it further, although I do have the windows open to let out the smell of stale Chinese food, and the fan whirring lazily overhead.
Tomorrow I have to get back to work on my 510 final and my job, so I am enjoying today with all my might. Do I read more books? Do I work on my manuscripts? Or should I just sit here with my feet up and do absolutely nothing?
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Welcome to the Hotel California
Today is one of those sticky, overcast days I associate with the tropics: not those lush, balmy tropics with white sands and turquoise water you see in the travel bureau commercials, but the real tropics, where light-painted houses have beads of sweat dripping down their walls, geckos clinging tenaciously to ceilings, and banana trees rustling lazily in the faint breeze.
Not, of course, that LA or even Long Beach is actually humid or sticky (not compared to Florida), but today does actually have an element of humidity which is endearingly homelike. I have three windows open: my kitchen window, my street-facing window, and the louvered window next to my door. Through all three I see the low-lying swaths of grey cloud, and various types of greenery, mostly palms and that strange tree outside my window which I haven't yet identified yet.
Downstairs someone is rolling around a garbage bin, and the rumble of the plastic wheels on the pebbled walk makes me think of thunder, which I miss in a way I could never have imagined before I moved to this lush and deceptive desert.
Long Beach is much too windy to be tropical though. Whenever I picture the tropics it's always with slow, sultry air with only faint stirrings of breeze - until there's a hurricane anyway.
I'm sorry I haven't written lately, but I've been overworked to the point of rebellion. Earlier today (a Saturday, mind you) I turned in two final projects (they aren't late, they were due today). I have since rewritten one lab and have 7 left, plus two essays left to rewrite, an extra credit essay, and an extra credit lab (that I don't think I'll have time to do, sadly) and a final (which is almost done, I just have to write the discussion - I've already written the conclusion) all due Monday.
I am taking Tuesday off. Only inexorable forces of nature or my boss will make me do anything but nothing on Tuesday.
Earlier today, I texted a classmate to complain about our workload, saying, "I don't feel like dying of nervous prostration like those ladies in Victorian novels." He replied, "You're tougher than those dried up broads," which made me giggle, to think of those fair ladies with their beautiful complexions that 7 dermatologists and hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars' worth of modern cosmetics can't give me described as "dried up".
The rest of the week will be spent on my job and my last final which is due Friday, and then I'm taking the weekend off too (it's been a hard semester) before settling down to intensive work on my job the week after that. Then I fly home on May 30th for a wonderful vacation.
I also have to do laundry tomorrow, what a pain. One of my friends from high school bragged how she had forty pairs of underwear so she only had to do laundry once a month (I assume she had several pairs of jeans and forty shirts as well), but I don't think buying 365 pairs of underwear would solve my laundry problems.
Oh well...guess I should get back to work. Heigh ho...
Not, of course, that LA or even Long Beach is actually humid or sticky (not compared to Florida), but today does actually have an element of humidity which is endearingly homelike. I have three windows open: my kitchen window, my street-facing window, and the louvered window next to my door. Through all three I see the low-lying swaths of grey cloud, and various types of greenery, mostly palms and that strange tree outside my window which I haven't yet identified yet.
Downstairs someone is rolling around a garbage bin, and the rumble of the plastic wheels on the pebbled walk makes me think of thunder, which I miss in a way I could never have imagined before I moved to this lush and deceptive desert.
Long Beach is much too windy to be tropical though. Whenever I picture the tropics it's always with slow, sultry air with only faint stirrings of breeze - until there's a hurricane anyway.
I'm sorry I haven't written lately, but I've been overworked to the point of rebellion. Earlier today (a Saturday, mind you) I turned in two final projects (they aren't late, they were due today). I have since rewritten one lab and have 7 left, plus two essays left to rewrite, an extra credit essay, and an extra credit lab (that I don't think I'll have time to do, sadly) and a final (which is almost done, I just have to write the discussion - I've already written the conclusion) all due Monday.
I am taking Tuesday off. Only inexorable forces of nature or my boss will make me do anything but nothing on Tuesday.
Earlier today, I texted a classmate to complain about our workload, saying, "I don't feel like dying of nervous prostration like those ladies in Victorian novels." He replied, "You're tougher than those dried up broads," which made me giggle, to think of those fair ladies with their beautiful complexions that 7 dermatologists and hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars' worth of modern cosmetics can't give me described as "dried up".
The rest of the week will be spent on my job and my last final which is due Friday, and then I'm taking the weekend off too (it's been a hard semester) before settling down to intensive work on my job the week after that. Then I fly home on May 30th for a wonderful vacation.
I also have to do laundry tomorrow, what a pain. One of my friends from high school bragged how she had forty pairs of underwear so she only had to do laundry once a month (I assume she had several pairs of jeans and forty shirts as well), but I don't think buying 365 pairs of underwear would solve my laundry problems.
Oh well...guess I should get back to work. Heigh ho...
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Sick
This week has been horrendous. Work, work and more work.
Friday I worked all day and then cooked all evening when I should have been working.
Today I worked through the morning and went to a barbecue at my friend Jake's place at one and stayed there til six when I came home because I wasn't feeling good. When I got home I felt dizzy and decided to lie down for a few minutes...woke up an hour later very, very ill. Luckily I didn't throw up, but I couldn't stand up for more than a few minutes without feeling horrible...my chest is full of phlegm and I'm coughing and my head hurts and all of me hurts and when I stand up I get all dizzy and things go round and round.
Needless to say I haven't been working which is really bad since I have SO MUCH work to do. But being in bed for the past three hours seems to have helped so hopefully a good night's sleep will restore me to health so I can get as much work done as possible.
Okay it's time to go to bed...so not feeling good.
Friday I worked all day and then cooked all evening when I should have been working.
Today I worked through the morning and went to a barbecue at my friend Jake's place at one and stayed there til six when I came home because I wasn't feeling good. When I got home I felt dizzy and decided to lie down for a few minutes...woke up an hour later very, very ill. Luckily I didn't throw up, but I couldn't stand up for more than a few minutes without feeling horrible...my chest is full of phlegm and I'm coughing and my head hurts and all of me hurts and when I stand up I get all dizzy and things go round and round.
Needless to say I haven't been working which is really bad since I have SO MUCH work to do. But being in bed for the past three hours seems to have helped so hopefully a good night's sleep will restore me to health so I can get as much work done as possible.
Okay it's time to go to bed...so not feeling good.
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