What allegedly intelligent adults *actually* do.

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yet more political crap...

Well, everything *was* fine…

No, I mean *really* -- like just this morning. Things were all pretty good.

Now things are weird.

Yet more political upheaval in my life and career. Yay.

Let me briefly explain my feelings about political upheaval:

I hate it.

I do not simply hate it, I abhor it. I avoid it. I will lock myself in my office, hide in the bathroom, or throw a blanket over my head and sit in my car to hide from it. I will duck behind potted plants, pretend to be inanimate objects, and claim to not speak English to get away from petty political shit. I have not participated in political shit since primary school, when a girl named Michelle decided Renée and I could not be friends with Tamara or any of Tamara’s friends…who were also some of Michelle’s, Renée’s, and my friends. There was upheaval, drama, and allegations of stolen friends and lipglosses; notes flying back and forth, name-calling, and it was *brutal*.

I frankly had a hard time keeping up with it; I had to resort to taking notes to stay current with everything.

Butsoanyway.

Upheaval appears to be back. I cannot get a moment’s peace away from these bastards and their petty crap, it seems. I would go into great, exhaustive detail, but I cannot right at the moment; for purposes of sympathising with me, let’s just say that Someone Important just took another position (‘just’ as in just today…or yesterday, probably), and already the emails, telephone calls, and IMs are flying about who is allowed to be friends with whom, and so forth. They are probably storming the buildings as I type to claim their rightful space, and so forth.

Just shoot me.

I am *so* looking forward to this time next year, when I can start packing with a clear conscience and a partially-finished Magnificent Octopus; it’s my plan to be out of town before my signatories’ ink is dried.

Bwaah.

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As I was looking for St Ives...

This is my nominee for Funniest Wikipedia Entry EVER.

As I Was Going To St. Ives

I stumbled on it whilst in class looking for St Ives' Hair Repair, and I swear -- I could *hear* John Cleese reading it.

Butsoanyway.

Dinner last night was same as ever, I am still not finished with that writing crap, and I am having my routine all disrupted, and I'm angry. The pitifully few aspects of my life which I can form into a routine are, in my mind, inviolate. Or should be. For this semester, I spend my Mondays being worked into a philosophical froth, and my Tuesdays in a never-ending seminar with my HoD trying to regain my bearings.

And I pick up some luscious crab chowder and have it in class, too.

Now true: this is one drawback to dual-programming it, which I am to a large extent. The running joke in my (main) field is that when I am done, I'll have enough letters to make a whole new name. But I look forward to decompressing on Tuesdays, because this semester I have worked it where (class-wise) I am doing one program on Monday, another on Tuesday, and the rest of the week on this third thing that actually ends up being Job 2, but I'm not going to go explaining how that works out, 'cos it's not that simple. Job 2 is a real job, but I get credit for it in a roundabout way.

Butsoanyway.

So tomorrow I am LOSING my cool seminar so that I can help make a film-like thing at Job 2 that illustrates how cool we are. That's neat, sure. But I will REALLY miss being in seminar, especially cos today was so damned stupid that i could just spit. I mentioned my unrepentant Phenomenologist (actually, I think I originally called him a Holist, but I can't help but be honest) in the Husserl - slash - My Little Pony sense.

No, I really cannot be serious one bleeding minute longer than I absolutely must. Cope.

Well, doesn't this all just drive me up a tree. Keeping my big mouth shut is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Bwaah. Today we were harping without end on behaviours that *I* attribute (bearing in mind that I am not a Behaviourist) to chaining and That Other Thing, Occam's Razor being what it is and all. Simple explanations will suffice, as long as they both describe and predict the behaviour reliably. No need to get fancy.

Well, it would seem that some people *like* fancy.

Whatever. I'm just staying quiet, and really don't give a rat's ass whether Otho and Ingmar make it to the museum, or not. I hope they get lost, jumped by a street gang, rolled, and sold into slavery. Both of them. I hope they end up on a boat to Taiwan for the NAMBLA convention. Otho and Ingmar can kiss my heinie. It is frustrating to not be able to make clear the difference between a thought experiment and an actual experiment, and it's even more frustrating when one is in a room full of people who don't understand why one is frustrated. And it is *most* frustrating when people think they are being clever by perverting thought experiments to quell a legitimate objection, like bringing up the possibility that a hypothetical dog running through a hypothetical forest might stop to take a nap, or some shit. That crap really pisses me off. Bwaah. What if Otho had a lobotomy?!? Wha...wha...we're talking about something that DOES NOT EXIST, probably would not actually occur, and was only brought up for illustrative purposes, as a canned situation! What if Otho had three dicks and a llama named Tyrone? Huh? What then?

Oh, I've learnt my lesson; this semester, I am staying quiet.

Booop.


Oh, wait--I'm not done. It's *also* frustrating for someone to not acknowledge that a reflex is not the same as 'hard-wiring', and then attempt to refute an event that illustrates hard-wiring by listing off why this event isn't a reflex.

Bwaah!

Why am I doing this? I know. That's the obvious question. There really is a point and purpose, I am just whining about the steps *to* that point and purpose. That's all. Humour me; I'm harmless. And I find cool free things. :-)

So now let's go back to whining about how I have to wake up in just a bit and go miss my favourite seminar (it's really hard to tell which I'll miss most -- the class, or the crab chowder), and be all unhappy. Well, unhappy-ish; I do get to get stuff accomplished, and hand out with my boss who is cool and intelligent, and all that jazz. But I don't get to vent this week. That's my point.

And then I have to go out with Mummers tomorrow night, which means that I will miss trivia (yet another hallowed tradition shot to hell). And Valentine's Day is coming up, which means that the Holiday Season is over.

Yep, over.

There is no justice.

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One sick Cookie

Cookie barfed yesterday evening and then barfed again this morning, so I took her to the vet. Last night I phoned Dr Superhero, who was swamped (he runs a 24-hr emergency clinic that is an alternative to the 'real' local 24-hour pet hospital) and said to just pull food & water from her, and let her sleep unless she barfs again, in which case bring her in. Cookie wasn't eating (I had even tried to tempt her with Science Diet's a/d, and she turned her nose up at it), but she had been drinking a little, and was otherwise alert and normal, so I just let her be.

When I got to Dr Vet's this morning, they did blood work and tested her for feline pan-something (which is a virus), and the pan-whatever test came back the wrong colour the first time, and so they had to re-do it, and then it came back negative (I have to remember after class tonight to look up whatever that is, 'cos after the first false alarm one, Dr Vet totally told me he didn't want to discuss that with me unless or until it came back positive, and he knows how I am, so it must be pretty bad). Since I had to call out of work (both jobs) for this, I asked them to go ahead and x-ray her also, just to make sure that everything was ok. My rationale there was that if there *is* something wrong with her, I need to find out *today*, not tomorrow when I'm back swamped, and she's half-dead. So they did the pan-whatever blood test, pre-surgery blood work (this will be her pre-spay blood work in a week or so; we just got it out of the way now, in case it was abnormal), and x-ray, and physical. She has a little fever (it was 104 I think, but it went down after some shot), and so Dr Vet said that Cookie may have a little tummy upset, or a flu of some kind, but she's ok.

He gave her a shot of Tagamet, and of something that starts with a C to keep her from vomiting and/or being unhappy tummy-wise, and also a shot of antibiotics (just in case), and sub-cutaneous fluids. And so I got i/d (the bland diet Science Diet one) to feed her at about 8p tonight; until then, she is on no food/water. I think i/d is the feline version of a BRAT diet. :-) Her x-ray showed some gas and some poop on its way out, but not anything else of interest, and Dr Vet said the gas is normal and is probably because of the vomiting, and the poop is even more normal. :-) So she just caught a bug of some kind, it looks like.

Rhett was screaming and crying for Cookie (he *HATES* being separated from her!), so I asked Dr Vet if it was ok to put Rhett in with Cookie and he said yes, so Rhett is happy now...sigh. What a big mook he is!

I am getting ready for a class tonight that runs late, and I hate leaving Cookie, but she seems ok. I still have not decided if I like this class, or not. Whee.

Ok...laterz.