be nice and get smarter

 

This is very cool:  http://freerice.com/

 

In Other News, I feel horrible -- seriously bad.  It's this damned virus that I cannot seem to shake, and it is making my life hell...I feel as if I could sleep for a week.  Literally. 

 

Oh, and...I smashed the crap out of my little toe.  Again.  At this point, I probably don't have an actual *bone* in my little toe, just like, bone chips and mush.  Ok, I'm being gross and wallowing in self-pity. 

 

I will be so, so glad once this one class is over -- it's the intensive advanced one, and it sucks.  I would love to be kvetching, but it will have to wait another few weeks.  I long for rest, though.  Honestly.  This is one of those times where one has to honestly wonder how much exhaustion a body can take.  Poor Rhett Butler (most co-dependent cat on Earth) wants me to hug him and go to sleep, and I have to keep trying to explain to him that I can't...not right now.  Poor baby.

 

ok...back to work.  At least the good part of this is that at the end of all this, I have one cool-as-hell class designed.  That part rocks. 

...goes around

Crystal's mother has died, I am *still* sick, my pet project class is
ok...just ok, and I'm freaking *famished*.

oh...and Eviljob officially stopped threatening to start harrassing
the parking lot cats, who are doing fine btw.

it's naptime. Too bad i'm still at work.

What comes around...

Another boring, lonely Friday. I'm less sick, at least. I caught this
probably from going over to my father's last weekend. Figures. Or
maybe not...it does seem to be making the rounds here. Cough, cough,
cough.

One of the ladies I work with at Eviljob is dealing with a dying
mother. I haven't talked about Crystal here before, but she is someone
I care a great deal for; she's accomplished a lot with her life,
considering her bad start -- her mother raised her around addicts and
dealers, and she apologises for being 'slow' (she's not that bad), and
explained to me once that when she was born, her mother was on
heroin...and that's why she's 'slow'. Crystal's even been on America's
Most Wanted. Seriously. When she was seven, the piece of filth that is
her father abducted her and took her off to molest for weeks until he
was captured. So really, it was her father on AMW, but Crystal said
that when she came back, she felt like eveyone knew about what had
happened to her because it was on TV. I could go on, but...she's ok
now. And I like her a LOT. And her idiot mother is dying, demented
from the cancer that started in her liver and has spread to her brain.

Her mom abandoned her several years ago to move to the UK, chasing
after...wait for it...a man. Crystal finished high school practically
homeless, started at the bottom at Eviljob, and has tried her best to
carve some tiny piece of Normal out for herself. She touches my heart.

Her mother came home, to die, several weeks ago. 'Home', of course,
meaning Crystal's home. The home that Crystal made for herself; the
home that Crystal has tried to keep clean of mess and insanity. And
her mom brought her boyfriend from the UK...let's call him Robert.

This guy -- according to Crystal -- was ok. Helping out with Hospice,
pitching in with guard duty (a difficult task as the cancer progressed
in her brain and her behaviour became more erratic, complete with
hallucinations, laughter, rage...you name it), and so forth. Last
week, Hospice warned Crystal and Robert that the end, as they say, was
nigh. On Sunday, Robert married Crystal's mother, with no advance
warning to Crystal. Crystal accepted this, figuring it was Robert's
way of demonstrating his love...even if her mom wasn't coherent enough
to understand anymore, even if Robert had strung her mother along for
a few years in the UK, refusing to marry her.

Robert, incidentally, is Crystal's mom's fifth (or so) boyfriend since
moving overseas...so it's not as if she was lacking opportunity to
come back and be a fucking mom to Crystal, or anything.

butsoanyway.

So this week, her mother has been getting worse, with inappropriate
acting-out behaviours that I am sure can be imagined, and does not
need to be described here. I have listened to many of them from
Crystal because I know she needs to unload; it is hard to see someone
you care about disintegrating, losing even the most basic of human
dignities and modesties.

Then yesterday, when she came home from work, Crystal found a used
condom in the wastebasket by her mother's bed.

Yeah. Honeymoon.

Don't feel bad -- Crystal didn't see that coming, either. Same for me.

Robert had stepped out, so Crystal tore through the trash and found
more, put them in Ziploc baggies, and phoned the police and Hospice.

A few hours later, some division of the police department that deals
with shit like this had 'interviewed' her mother (and agreed with
Crystal and the Hospice nurse that she was 'gone' mentally, and
probably has been for long enough that Robert was an abuser, not a
husband/boyfriend) and declared it rape and some kind of abuse (I
forget...like invalid abuse), and intercepted Robert before he could
get back in the house. Stupid fucker.

So now Crystal has to finish helping her mother die, assist with
prosecuting this creep, get the marriage annulled, and get an attorney
or something to find out if this fucktard took out a life insurance
policy on her mom as her husband, or something. And so on. And look
behind her, cos as he was being taken away, Robert (who sees NOTHING
wrong with what he has done, by the way) was threatening her, and
claiming that as her husband, he has more 'rights' to her than
Crystal.

fucking unbelievable.

I listened to Crystal the whole time I was at Eviljob today; I wish I
could do more. But this disturbs me, and it's not often that something
really upsets me...but this did. And it is stories like this that make
me wish I were religious, so that I could tell Crystal that I would
pray for her. And her idiotic, negligent mother, who never did a
single thing when she was in her right mind to deserve someone as
wonderful as Crystal...whom she threw away.

Life is strange...as are the people in it. Just plain strange.

.

Sick. And tired.

It is one of the most over-used phrases in the English language, but
it is true. I have run my ass into the ground, and yesterday I popped
up with an upper respiratory infection, so today I had to speak for
almost three hours straight with no break whilst hopped up on DayQuil.
Pfft. In one week alone, I lost five pounds from all the walking I've
had to do, and this week is almost worse -- today I had to walk from
one end of campus to the other THREE TIMES because some department who
shall remain nameless but assists special-needs students couldn't get
their shit together. Or, rather, the work-study eighteen-year old who
kept intercepting my phone calls and giving me misinformation couldn't
get her shit together. When I went there for the second time, I even
flat-out said that I know some of these chirrin have
organisational...erm...issues, and could I please put a blank form or
two on file Just In Case, cos I don't want one of these guys shorted
for something they can't fucking help, and They of all people should
'get' that planning ahead is not a strength for certain people. So I
was told no -- no back-up blank forms. So then I asked them to PLEASE
check to make sure that NO ONE ELSE had asked for accommodation...they
checked and said no.

Guess what was in my email inbox when I walked back to my office? Yep
-- another form. BWAAH!

...and that was my lunch break, plus some; I literally had no time to
eat today. And I just took another DayQuil, and now I'm rid of any
desire to eat at all...something in these OTC cold & flu meds always
kills my appetite.

butsoanyway.

I have to nap for about 20 - 30 mins., then do more prep for tomorrow.
If I can get ahead, I'll post more soon, but I just had to tell
*someone* how tired and defeated and just plain shitty I feel right
now.

And the price of gas is fucking killing me. We *have* to have this
happen the one quarter where I have to travel all over Hell and
Creation?

I need a hug. And a loaded gun. in that order.

Gahh...I am in Hell

This semester is a disaster...I may become a shepherd. I hate our
bookstore, and our students are...unprepared. At best. Meg, in similar
situations, has used much more...*colourful* language (and started
looking up prereq profs, to see who was responsible for passing
certain cretins), but I am being polite. Sigh. Save me.

On Sat., I fed a stray momcat, but couldn't snatch her cos her babies
were nowhere to be seen...I went back Sunday and Monday night and
could not find her. On Tuesday, I sent Harry to look, and he didn't
see her. My heart is broken over this.

And lastly, I am so tired that I could die. Seriously.

omgwtfbbq

 

I am sooo wrecked...I am KILLING myself over this 'develop a course in less than a month' shit.  I feel as if I am about to start puking blood, or something.  Well, we're launching this bitch shortly, ready or not.  I am so in over my head here; this is NOT like corporate training, no matter how many times I try to find parallels and end up feeling as if I want to puke blood.  Bwaah.  On the one hand, I am all honoured that I got picked to do this -- seriously,despite my complaining, I am -- but on the other hand...

 

I DON'T KNOW WHAT IN THE CHRIST I AM DOING!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

 

Everyone...well, *virtually* everyone...in this academic setting looks down on me to a certain extent because of my corporate background.  It's not simply that it's a corporate background, though -- it's not the *right* corporate background.  Toe-to-toe in a CV sense, I have had more exposure, more responsibility, higher earnings, and whatnot than a lot of the people who turn their nose up at me...it's just been in the 'wrong' field, doing the 'wrong' things, for the 'wrong' company.  And this despite the fact that Eviljob bestowed a grant on my academic environment not too long ago that went to build a conference room and fund some other crap, so that I have to stare at the Eviljob logo wherever I go. 

 

Eviljob, like Elvis, is everywhere. 

 

Okay, not *everyone* looks down on my Eviljob affiliation, but...it seems like it sometimes.  Especially when after EJ gave that money, I was half-wondering, or half-tempted, to wander Over That Way, to That Group...I mean, I *know* what Eviljob wants; I could do their shit in my sleep (and have!). 

 

But enough about that.  Do you know that I think the book rep is now avoiding me?  Well, if I were she, *I* would avoid me, as well; we had *such* a cock-up with the book stuffs, and I FINALLY got my shite this past Monday -- which, by the way, was WAY LATE, considering how I'm taking all this off in a totally new direction.  I am so pleased with how I just dumped everything and rebuilt, rilly; a more frightened me would have just kept everything as-was and all.  And we all know that underneath I am only a delicate, frightened flower.  No, rilly.  S'true. 

 

Butsoanyway.

 

So then I needed help with the online set-up for the class cos I am currently engaged in Holy War with a faction of our IT Department (don't ask, but it's going to be a while 'fore I blog from school or Job 2), and wanted to use the book company's website to house some of my stuff and some demos, &c. It's this really nifty website named something like hopeyougetthroughthisclass.com.  Tres inspiring.  What's funny is that Meg's university has a similar online program for faculty, and I keep calling 'hopeyougetthroughthis' by Meg's prog's name.  But whatever.  So I couldn't log in with the login I'd made, and couldn't make a new login, and I couldn't blah, blah, blah....and I'm NOT phoning Support to set it up the traditional way.  No fucking way.  So I do what any resourceful girl would do in this situation, and I phone our rep and cry. 

 

Well, I got logged in.  Whatever.

 

So I have all my pretty flash demos up (they are soooooo gorgeous) and just logged in and out a few times just cos I can.  w00t.  Now I have to head in to Eviljob, and then it's back home to keep playing with all my stuff.  I think I am going to be a totally sucky person -- nutrition-wise -- and pick up pizza on the way home. 

 

Oh, and -- omg -- I found an online casino where I can play Texas Tea for FREE.  They have all kinds of slots, but I just like the little armadillo.  Pure awesomeness.  Truth is, I am not really a 'slots person' -- I play only occasionally, and only Texas Tea, Texas Tina (armadillo again; I like Texas Tea better, though), and Hexbreaker 1 & 2 'cos they remind me of Squoosh and Cookie.  Squooshable LOVES slots -- he watches the screen and everything, even talks to it.  :-) 

 

Ok...gotta go. 

I wanna learn how to blow shit up with my mind.

I am sitting in the parking lot across the street from Eviljob because
we've been evacuated after a bomb threat. Sigh. See? EVERYONE hates
Eviljob. At least I got to do the 'face time' thing. w00t. People
often ask me about Eviljob...what it is, etc.; well, think of an
international company that people would want to blow up. That's
probably Eviljob. Yep, yep.

I have seen the first episode of CelebraCadabra cos the fabu Max Maven
is on it (eventually, i'm told), and SuperMom and I were joking about
me harnessing the powers of my mind to make the bomb go off (joke,
people...this is HUMOUR), and SuperMom said if I could pull that one
off, i could for sure get tapped for Season 2. But seriously, as much
wishful thinking as there is out here, it'd be hard to claim that I
did it. Sigh. Where's Uri Geller when you need him? ;-) seriously
though, we're supposed to have our phones off, so I'd better get off
before I get fussed at, cos i *do* still have a management lanyard,
however silly that may be. I'm going to start singing 'Some Fun Now',
making up my own lyrics, of course. Hee.