Whoa. I just glanced at my Recent Entries page and the poll I posted a while ago was showing up in some Cyrillic language or other. Then I refreshed and it was in English again.
Has this been a night of strange portents, or what?
Y'know, I'm starting to think there might be a grain of truth at the bottom of the theory that comics make kids dumber. I've read four volumes of The Sandman over the last thirty-six hours and I now find the thought of sitting down to a "real book," even a lighthearted work of fantasy, rather daunting. Hell, I'm almost as unmotivated to pick up a novel as I normally am to pick up a work of nonfiction, and for the same reason. Graphic novels are just so much easier to get sucked into.
Then again, if I really do have ADD, perhaps this is more true for me than it would be for most people. (I won't know if I do for at least another week. Medical wheels are turning slowly.)
It's been a very nice thirty-six hours, at least; besides reading comics, I also received a guided tour of some very spiffy parts of The City, played silly card games, participated in an informal episode of Naked Chef, and spent a lot of time just hanging out, which I was very glad to be able to do someplace other than my house (and in much better company.) That kind of relaxed, casual togetherness is something I've been really missing lately; most of the people I'm dating I don't get the opportunity to just hang out and be near without anything special having to happen, because I just don't see them often enough or for long enough.
...
Ugh. I'd just finished writing that when I heard an odd clattering noise coming from the kitchen. Strange noises in the middle of the night are never what you might call soothing; I was tempted to shut my door firmly, burrow into bed and not come out till morning, but figured it would probably be a better idea to investigate in case it was something that was only gonna get worse in a few hours. I tiptoed out to the kitchen, flashlight in hand, ready to bolt at the first sign of Anything Big and Scary, to discover the noise was apparently coming from an inch-long insect of the jumps-like-it's-on-a-hot-griddle variety, with one o' them rock-hard carapaces to account for the disproportionate amount of noise it was making at each lopsided landing (it didn't seem to be aiming itself anywhere in particular, or having much luck landing on its feet. Injured? Quite likely.)
I was going to leave it alone and hope to find it gone the next day, but when it managed to flop out into the hallway I became afeared that at this rate it might make it all the way to my room, and realistically I couldn't leave the door shut all night, as I was going to have to use the bathroom at some point and with my luck I'd have forgotten about the insect by then and thus would fail to shut the bedroom door behind me and it would no doubt blunder on in, at which point I would no longer be able to ignore it because there's No Way I could sleep with something like that in the room. If the noise didn't succeed in keeping me wide awake, the wondering where in the room it was now and how close it was to leaping on my face would.
So I dropped a large plastic cup over it, and then dithered for a good ten minutes before sliding a piece of cardboard underneath and escorting the poor arthropod outside. That cup-and-cardboard technique always seems so precarious to me, as I always imagine the insect is just waiting to bolt from the cup and scurry up my arm the instant I let the cardboard slip so much as a millimeter (of course it's never stiff enough or my hands steady enough for that not to happen at least once during the trip outside), and when the particular insect in question is the sort to literally batter at the walls of its impromptu cell the entire time--well, to say I find the prospect nerve-racking is an understatement. But I finally girded my loins and did it.
...
And no sooner did I write that last sentence than a chirping noise began to emanate at intervals from what seems to be the direction of the bathroom. I haven't geared myself up to leave my haven once more to investigate, but as it seems to be happening like clockwork every forty-five seconds, I can hope it's merely the smoke alarm needing batteries or some such. I just wish my roommates were awake to fucking deal with this. Once again it's a case of "the one who's bothered by it is the one who has to fix it." This I'd gladly ignore, but I suspect I'll be unable to sleep unless I shut it up, and will have some difficulty figuring out how to do so.
...
For once I got my wish. 'Tis e'en now being fixx0red. Apparently it's gonna take a while, but at least now it's in the hands of someone who has some clue what they're doing. Sheesh, what a night.
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- Current Mood
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thoughtful
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- Tags
- 2004.05
From : service@paypal.com <service@paypal.com>
Reply-To : <service@paypai.com> <--[It may not be obvious depending on which font you're using, but PayPal here is spelled with a capital i [Edit: Okay, that's even weirder; it shows up as a capital i in Courier and a lowercase i in Verdana]]
Sent : Thursday, May 27, 2004 7:46 PM
Subject : PayPal Service Fraud Warning !
Dear PayPal valued member,
Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity of the PayPal
community we have issued this warning message.
It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be renew due to
inactive members, spoof reports and frauds.
You must to renew your records and you will not
run into any future problems with the online service.
However, failure to update your records will result in account deletation.
This notification expires on May 31, 2004.
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Guess I'd better to send them my informations right away if I don't want my account deletated, eh?
Incidentally, how the hell can I suddenly have such a bad crick in my neck after having the shit massaged out of it last night?
I'm applying for a job I'd really like, but although I'm confident that I can do it and do it well, it seems very likely that my lack of credentials and other such official endorsements will keep me from even being considered.
Right now I'm composing a letter to enclose with my application, explaining why I think I can do this job despite how thin the application is, because on the strength of the application alone I don't think I'll be asked to come in for an interview. If the letter does get me interviewed, I'm a bit more confident of my ability to sell myself, but first I have to sell myself in the letter, and that's damn hard because the odds are looming over me and my confidence is flagging. I need to stop thinking that I'm begging them to give me a chance and get into more of a "they should damn well want me and all I need to do is inform them of that" mindset. Easier said than done.
It doesn't help that I'm badly in need of a job and this is one of the few that might actually make me enough money while letting me work decent hours, never mind that it's also one of the few I could get any kind of enjoyment out of. Being very invested in this makes it much harder not to freak out about it, and freaking out precludes getting anything done.
I got a package o' medical shit I'd ordered today and found they'd thrown in a free sample of some fancy-ass multivitamin. How pointless is that? As an advertisement I suppose it works just as well as a leaflet without the free sample in it would, but there's certainly no benefit to be gained from including the sample unless their extra-spiffy new vitamin is actually potent enough to have noticeable health effects after only one dose.
I decided I'd take it anyway just to save me a day's worth of my usual multivitamin, but upon opening the package I was forcibly reminded of the reason my usual multivitamin is my usual multivitamin: most multivitamins besides my usual one come in pills THE SIZE OF NEW FRICKIN' ZEALAND.
The three such pills I so foolishly freed from their packaging sit now on my desk: speckled ellipsoids, vaguely resembling dinosaur eggs. The thought of attempting to force them down my throat, already slightly sore, fills me with a sort of horror, yet so does the thought of admitting defeat and simply throwing them away.
So they sit and silently mock me. I attempt to stare them down, but they show no fear; their countenance remains stoic, imperturbable.
This can't last. I predict that by nightfall, I will have thrown one or the other sort of caution to the winds, and either chucked them into the trash in a wanton display of profligacy, or challenged the fuckers head on and subjected myself to a long evening of painful gagging. Probably the latter, because I'm just that much of a masochist in all the most pointless of ways.
(Incidentally, the package also included a sample packet of hair-loss-reducing shampoo. I can't even begin to imagine the rationale for that. I did not order Rogaine from these folks.)
Yay! My 100th friend-of!
(Though it does feel a teeny bit illegitimate, since #100 is someone who wouldn't've known of my existence if I hadn't friended them. Ah well. I know at least some of y'all stumbled on me randomly and for some reason thought I was nifty, and that is good to know.)
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- Current Mood
- and there was much rejoicing
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- Tags
- 2004.05, meta
Yesterday, when I rode the elevator in Evans hall, I noticed a row of stickers high above the door that said "I TOOK THE STAIRS."
There appeared to be smaller text underneath saying something about a National Get-More-Exercise Day or something, so evidently it wasn't some kind of elevator boycott, but whatever it was...the person who put them there obviously hadn't taken the stairs, had they? There were enough of them and in a hard-enough-to-reach location that there's no way someone just reached a quick arm in and stuck them there--they'd have to have stood in the elevator for a good minute at least. So either they were in fact riding the elevator or they had a compatriot hold the door open, thereby keeping everyone else from using the elevator--which last, come to think of it, might indeed have been a rather heavy-handed attempt to enforce this get-more-exercise thing.
So, guerilla personal-trainer tactics, or merely deliberate irony through conscious self-contradiction? Or worse, plain and simple unconscious self-contradiction?
(Wow. Instead of parentheses, this seems to be an Entry Full of Hyphens.)
I was up horribly early this morning and was almost ready to crash by early evening, but then proceeded to stay up just as late as I usually do. For some reason, the thought of going to bed early triggers some serious kinda despair. As far as I can tell, on some level I think going to sleep is an admission that I've got nothing better to do, and therefore that my life is empty. With that kind of thinking going on, I'm not sure how I manage to sleep at all...somehow around 1 or so it becomes okay to go to bed, but why that's clock-related and not time-spent-awake related I don't know.
I ran around and got a lot done today, but it seems like my list of things to do is even longer now than it was before. A lot of people weren't in their offices when they should've been, which is no doubt a sign that I should've tried to see them before finals week. Yay further reasons to beat myself up even when I do get things accomplished. But how can I relax when I still haven't accomplished anywhere near enough of the things I need to?
satisfied