Words... what do they all mean?

Dear neighbor,

I love me some Santana, but when you play it from your car loud enough to WAKE ME UP and make me wonder if Morgan has figured how to get into my iTunes, it's not cool.

~the owner of that window right there

It's damn cold today. And rainy. I hate the rain. Especially when it's cold. And windy so that the frakking cold rain gets blown at me even under my umbrella. Alan took the car today, and my driving gloves - which are the only gloves I own other than my ski gear, which lives at Dad's house - are in the glove box (yes, I actually keep gloves in my glove box). Holding an umbrella means I can't stick my hands into my pockets to keep them warm, and it's DAMN COLD TODAY!

I walked into History of English in time to hear two of my classmates talking about the "schönes Wetter" and how the rain was wundervoll and I looked at them like they were crazy. Because they are. This Wetter is schlechtes like a schlechty thing.

Class lets out at 1:15. I usually catch the 1:40 Shuttle and am home by 2 on days I don't have the car. So I go to wait for the Shuttle in the... pavilion thing at the bus stop. It is covered but only has two solid walls, and along each of these walls is a bench. But one of the benches is broken, and the other is occupied - not by people, of course, but by WET UMBRELLAS. WTF why are you two racial descriptor deleted girls taking up sitting space with your wet umbrellas? Set them on the ground or just hold them since they're the little ones that can hang from your wrist.

This was a mild annoyance, until my bus didn't show up. So I'm cold and wet, my feet hurt from standing and waiting, and I'm getting hungry because I'm supposed to be home eating lunch right now and the frakking bus isn't even here yet. Finally I decide to screw it and catch one of the city buses, even though that means I have to transfer which means _more_ standing around in the cold rain waiting for the second bus. 'Cause who knows when the stupid uni shuttle will deign to show up?

I opted _not_ to stand around and wait for my transfer, though, and instead just walked home, since it's like, just under a mile and walking is slightly better than standing (still, though, I am a lazy bastard so this should be read as a big indicator of how pissed off I was). Turns out that was a good idea because by the time I walked into my apartment complex twenty minutes later, my transfer bus hadn't yet passed me.

Pls can we have sunshiny springtime now?

All right, so we've been playing L5R for about a month now. And, like, every other week we've had to move it from our regular night (Wednesday) because one of the other players has some kind of conflict, and Jordan doesn't like running sessions without players and having to catch people up later. It's never been me, and I've been really good (=lucky) about getting someone to watch Morgan whenever it ends up being rescheduled for. And btw, I'm never consulted about when would be convenient for me; it's rescheduled according to everyone else's timetables and then I'm notified and then I call Grandma & Popa or Rew and hope they'll be willing at what is usually the last minute.

So this weekend is the Fourth and I'm heading down to the boat on Wednesday after work to avoid the congestion of everyone else arriving on Thursday. Which means I won't be in town for game that night. I will be home on Sunday (which is usually our alternate day), but _Kevin_ isn't positive he'll be home on Sunday. So instead of just not playing at all this week (which we have done in the past when the stars just didn't align), Jordan is going to go ahead and run the session on Wednesday without me. See above reference to Jordan supposedly not liking to do so.

... Does this strike anyone else as complete bullshit? Bend over backwards for the three boys but fuck Sierra.

I don't know what his problem with me is. Maybe going all the way back to when I had to move and wanted Rew to be my roommate? Jordan got really butthurt about how "selfish" I was being in not taking _him_ into consideration. Um, sorry, no, Jordan, you are not a factor in decisions I make regarding the health and safety of MY CHILD. But I ended up finding a place I could rent on my own and don't need Rew so now it's no skin off his nose.

He doesn't like my roleplaying style. Fair call, as I don't like his GM-ing style. He says he wants character-based games and not railroaded plots. One would think this would be perfect for me, as I tend to make _people_. I'm usually (almost always) not the best fighter or smooth talker or other plot-moving types. But I do bother to make rounded characters - which, yes, in comparison to others do come off seeming rather "useless" - with backstories and families and extraneous influences (I do love Flaws/Disadvantages). Exactly what he asks us to do. But he never does anything with anything I give him. Josh had half the action of our Hunter game revolve around his character and the strained relationship with his wife. Jordan manages to ignore similar little details in my characters. I played an epileptic in our last L5R game and reminded about it every session but he never used it. Nor did he make use of the time my character had an abusive partner. That would have been exactly the kind of non-plot, character-driven action he says he wants, just like Josh and his wife: the other characters getting involved to get me out of the bad situation and my character having to adjust and grow up and become her own strong individual in the aftermath. It would have been _fantastic_, and that's why I took that Flaw, because I enjoy character insight like that and it's what Jordan said he wanted. It went exactly _nowhere_.

I'm sick of these double standards and I'm sick of stressing about living up to his expectations (and never seeming to do so) and I'm sick of fumbling around in his games and never accomplishing anything because of his frustratingly vague hints and excessive red herrings.

I'll answer the question before anyone can ask, "So why are you even playing with this guy?" Because I enjoy roleplaying and he's my only access to game. Because I'm lonely and my circle of friends in town consists mainly of my brother, and by extension through him Jordan, and through Jordan to the gamers. Because I get bored being stuck at home with a toddler and want at least one night a week where I can go out and be a _person_ instead of a parent, but good luck trying to convince my grandparents or Mom or Dad or Rew that personal time to just read a book on the couch or go out and see a movie is a valid reason to "need" babysitting. Yes, seriously, I really am that sad and lonely and desperate.

It's taken me an hour to type this because I'm trying my damnedest to remain coherent but I'm on the verge of tears and I'm shaking and I want to break something.

This one was for my World Literature in English class. And, you know, Nobel Prize in Literature notwithstanding, I really really did not like it. I don't get what all the glowing reviews are talking about. I finished this and my first thought was, "What the hell did I just read, and why?" It's incredibly short - 207 pages in my edition - and the characters almost invariably speak in this godawful dialect that reminded me of trying to read Huckleberry Finn in high school. The dialect and the falling-asleep factor are what made me take a whole week to read these two hundred measly pages. The humor gets old fast: irony is great, but come on. This book seems to survive on nothing else. At times I think the main character, Ganesh, is more clever than the other characters and is subtly manipulating them in amusing ways, but others he hardly seems any more intelligent than the rest of this Dickensian (no, that's not a compliment) cast of uneducated yokels.

God I'm so glad this book is done.

Title: The Mystic Masseur
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Pages: 207

7 / 24 books. 29% done!

To add to the WTF-ery of the colossal FAIL at casting Narcissa, I found this picture of Patrick Stewart while looking for ones of Helen McCrory that might possibly convince me that she will be a decent Narcissa. I have no idea why he showed up in my search results. ((ETA: Ah, 'cause she was in this show with him))



Patrick Stewart does spaghetti western? WTF is going _on_ with the world today?!

What absolute _genius_ decided to move Transportation and Parking Services off-campus? I was running late to my class this morning, and since it's my only one today and I would therefore only be on campus for one hour, I opted not to be even later by finding this new location to buy my semester parking permit. Well, I should have. 'Cause apparently only the first _three_ days of the semester are permit-free, not the first week. Why? It's only one more day! So I got a ticket. Which I took to this new location, which is off-campus, on the _other_ side of campus from where it used to be, and there is now a fucking _freeway_ between campus and it. WTF? So I buy my semester permit, but apparently that doesn't spare me from having to pay the ticket. Despite that it's been less than an hour since the ticket was issued. And ticketing people on Fridays is ridiculous anyway because the lots are _never_ full. Okay, well, at least not the one _I_ park in, which seems to be a well-kept secret.

Yes, I know my case is weak. That's why I'm not asking them to change anything, and I'm not going to try to appeal my citation, but jeebus.

Monday, 11 June

Wake up at 3:30 am to rearrange stuff in my packed bag, and swing by the apartment for a last-minute check before heading down to SFO.

Flight out of SFO to New York is delayed by an hour due to heavy traffic at JFK. We arrive at JFK and sit on the runway for 45 minutes in said traffic. Arrive at our gate and there's equipment in the way which we need to wait for someone to come and move. As we're finally pulling up and getting connected to the ramp, the flight attendant makes an announcement regarding connecting flights, "Those of you connecting to Paris, your flight is in gate 42 ((we'd arrived in gate 43)). Those of you going on to London, your flight is in gate 2. Once again, the flight to London is departing now out of gate 2." Gee, thanks a bunch. Even knowing this, they don't ask people to let us connecting passengers off first. So I and a bunch of other people dash to gate 2, only to find out the flight has been delayed from 9:30 to 10:30. It continues being delayed until 1:30 Tuesday morning, when we finally board, and push out at 2 am. No way in hell am I going to make my connection in Heathrow to Edinburgh. So while I was still in the gate at JFK, I changed my Edinburgh flight, to one departing London at 4:15, thinking that would be plenty of time.

Tuesday, 12 June

Arrive in Heathrow and go all over hell and gone to the connecting terminal, where I am then grilled by the lady checking my passport. Initially she asks fairly normal questions: where I'll be staying, how long I'll be here for, etc. And then she starts asking personal questions about me, and Alan, and about our relationship. Then she takes my passport, my fight itinerary, and my now-useless boarding pass for my original flight to Edinburgh, tells me to sit down and wait, and disappears for 20 minutes. I have no idea what she was doing, because when she finally came back she just asked me even more questions. Apparently she wasn't really convinced of whatever she was looking for, so I'm, like, on probation or something. My visa is "coded," whatever the hell that means.

So dicking around with her caused me to miss the 4:15 flight (though it hadn't departed yet, boarding was closed. Grr). So I reschedule _again_ to one leaving Heathrow at 5:15. It takes me forever to find the correct gate, wandering around by myself in what I now consider a mildly hostile environment, and I'm unable to contact Alan to let him know I'd been delayed further. I feel badly because he took the day off to pick me up (I was supposed to fly into Edinburgh at noon), and now by the time I get there it will be 6:30 and he could have put in a full day of work. Yarg.

Naturally, once I finally arrive in Edinburgh, my bag isn't there. I figure that it was put onto the 4:15 flight while I was held up with the passport lady, but when I speak to baggage, they inform me that it's STILL IN LONDON and won't arrive in Edinburgh until 9:something that night. We leave them Alan's flat and cell phone numbers so they can call us when it arrives and let us know they're on their way delivering it.

11 o'clock rolls around, still no call from baggage. Alan checks online and sees that my bag is at least there, but apparently it was too close to closing time for them to bother bringing it out to me tonight.

Wednesday, 13 June

No phone call throughout the whole day regarding my bag. What's the holdup if it's been there since last night? I'm glad I didn't have anything _really_ important in there. They finally deliver it at 6pm. I am very very unimpressed with this entire process and am not too happy about having to do it all over again on my way home. Hopefully Heathrow will let me back _out_ of the country with more enthusiasm than I saw coming in.

Things were going too well.

My composition class met in one of the library computer labs today, so we could learn how to use all the various kinds of resources the library has for our research papers. Afterwards, I'd walked all the way back to my car before I realized that I'd left my denim jacket in the lab. So I walk back, only to find that the lab is locked up and the lights are out, so I can't even see if my jacket is still in there. I manage to find the office of the librarian who had been helping us, but it's locked and dark, too, and there is no notice of office hours. So I call her and leave a voicemail asking if anyone turned the jacket in to her, or if our professor took it. Then on my way to my car again, Johnnie calls saying that my child support check was returned "Undeliverable as addressed" (despite that I've gotten every other child support check, which was addressed the exact same way). Now, I've had problems recieving my mail here before (a letter from Alan, Morgan's Christmas present from Johnnie, my invitation to register for school), but a few weeks ago I went into the branch and lodged a complaint, and the lady at the counter filled out a form and said she would get it to my carrier. But apparently that hasn't fixed the problem. I'm sure that _paying_ for a P.O. box might (maybe) help - if it's an issue with the carrier bringing it to my house, then just cut out the middle-man - but something about giving them money to passively fix a problem that shouldn't be a problem in the first place doesn't sit right with me.

Following in yesterday's footsteps...

I missed the bus this morning.  Only by seconds, I was on the other side of the intersection as it drove by my stop (and it doesn't actually stop unless someone is sitting on the bench, which of course I wasn't).  I waved and ran after it but it didn't stop.  So I had to turn around and walk back home and drive myself, which means paying for parking and hunting for a spot.

Just fucking fabulous.

• First rain of the season.  Cold and wet: two things I hate to be. (cold is only acceptable if it's cold enough to turn the rain into snow)
  
• Finger slipped on the alarm pad at work while trying to disarm it this morning, set off the alarm.  And of course there are no instructions for disarming it once it's been tripped, out where they can be found.  The alarm company was apparently able to reach Linda on her cell phone, and after fifteen minutes of shrieking ringing, it stopped.  The only good thing there is that my arrival at work at precisely 9 am is now well-documented.  Really, though, I was almost looking forward to a dispatch showing up; maybe it would have gotten me out of the.....
• Geology midterm.  Oh god it's been a long time since I had to improvise essays.
• It took the bus forever to get to school to pick me up.  Or maybe it just felt that way because I was sitting out in the rain while waiting for it.  My jeans are still wet.
• Rew, Jordan, and Katie went to see the Prestige tonight.  Rew had told me they were thinking about it, so I got all excited about it and we were trying to go on Sunday.  Due to Grandma's birthday party and mom for some reason needing to take Rew to lunch, we couldn't go then.  Jordan calls me up tonight and tells me that he and Katie are going to see it tonight, and that due to his work schedule, there will probably never be a time when both he and I are available.  So he said he'd tell Rew and leave it up to him whether he wanted to go with them, or wait and go with me.  Yeah, real hard to guess that one.  So Rew _calls_ me to tell me he's going with them.  Fine, whatever, I'll just see it when it comes out on video.  And I hung up on him.  Asshat.
  
• Alan turned his phone off so I couldn't call him on his lunch break

So it's only ten o'clock and I'm thinking of going to bed because I have nothing else to do.  Nobody's online (not that I have a big list of contacts, anyway).