hello friends

This one is going to be the hardest to write because it requires me to feel.

First of all, mecha. The results of one of his medical tests came back and said that, basically, the thing that was wrong with him for so long is now all better. We pretty much know what it was, why it was getting worse over time, though not why it started in the first place. He is still weakened and illish, but he is officially recovering.

Pity we don't get to be gallbladderless buddies, but then, at least he gets to avoid surgery this way.

I'm feeling relatively on top of school, at least so far. Of course, that may just be because as of yet I have had little in the way of assignments and no tests. The test that I expect to be awful is coming up Wednesday, and I guess then there will be either a shaky sense of "okay that is not so bad", or tears and terror. The professor told us that the usual score on his tests tends to be in the 60s, and that he curves "some but not that much". This is potentially worrying depending on whether he's talking about the mode or the mean. All I can really do for now is slog through the horrifically dry textbook and do my best to memorize the couple of hundred definitions of very similar-sounding terms, many of which are actually circular (such as the definition of "information system" starting out as "an information system that[...]").

Huh. That's lovely, that class's website has apparently decided that I am not allowed to log in anymore. Well, that's okay, there certainly haven't been enough things going wrong in my life lately. Let's have some more! Big problems, small problems, it doesn't matter, apparently, as long as I'm suffering.

Which of course leads into the part ( that is whiny enough to need a cut in case you want to skip it )

I had a counseling appointment scheduled yesterday. Got there at 1:30 for my 2:00 appointment, except then I found out that no, it was an 11:00 appointment. DUH IDIOT. I was able to reschedule for today but still, how stupid can a person be? This stupid, apparently. I wound up not going to my class either, because it wasn't until 4, which would have meant two hours sitting around doing nothing. And I'm currently unable to just sit around doing nothing, because when I try I just wind up sobbing miserably. So I gave up on the day. It was ruined anyway. I couldn't even make dinner without something going wrong; I had a pot full of meal-in-a-box jambalaya on the stove, went to stir it, and it spat boiling-hot jambalaya all over my hand, causing me to jump back in pain and send a spoonful of also boiling-hot jambalaya all over the kitchen and/or myself. It sucked.

About five hours ago I ran into a table and ripped my hand open (yes, seriously, I ran into a table. shut up.). There was a flap of skin hanging open and blood welling up underneath. I put neosporin and a bandage on it, got on with going to class and such, and didn't look at it again until after my shower a half-hour ago. Now the flap has plainly fused back to the rest of my hand. The human healing factor creeps me out sometimes.

Now it is about time to get ready to go back to campus and try this appointment again, and then hopefully have an appropriate amount of time between it and my 4:00 class. At least I have a nice new very warm coat that Quentin helped me pick out this weekend. It is Carhart brand which I guess is like really good or something? All I know is it is heck of warm and comfortable. Between it and my new half-fingerless Army-style gloves, I am ready to face the elements. Even if it scares me to think of facing much of anything else.

My day, more or less chronologically.

This morning the neighbors awoke me by slamming kitchen drawers open and shut, as they often do. Their kitchen is on the other side of an all-too-thin wall from my bedroom, you see. And they really seem to hate those drawers. So they woke me up, and I drifted off into more broken sleep, and then at some point looked at my alarm clock and it was almost 6 AM. So they were probably slamming those drawers at closer to 5. Thanks, guys. I hate you and wish you would move out and be replaced by a family of narcoleptic mimes.

I kept almost breaking into tears during my first class, which is obviously not an acceptable turn of events. While walking to the bus stop and waiting for the bus I kept wondering whether I should try a walk-in counseling session or whether I should try to hold out for the appointment I made for next Friday; finally the bus decided for me, by being one of the "limited" ones that only go to the library and then make everyone get off. The health center is just across both the streets from the library. So off I went, across the streets and up to the fourth floor, and managed to get in with a counselor after a minimal wait.

Since it was just a walk-in we didn't really have the time to go very in-depth (though I still managed to go overtime, but eh). Still, I talked some to a person and left feeling better, so that's something. I also canceled the appointment with the other person, and scheduled another oen with the woman I saw today, on Monday. I don't know how long I'll keep seeing her, but I guess "as long as it helps" is a good rubrick for now.

When I asked, she said that the very vague cut-off line between "still standard grieving" and "gone on into just plain depression" is about a year. It's also a total garbage number, because everybody is different, but. It is fucking terrifying feeling like this and having no idea when you might expect it to start getting better. It is a little easier having a number in front of you. A year. It is something solid. I can work with that.

After checking out of the health center I came home, had barely enough time to get a shower and grab some food, and had to go back to campus again. Sat and wrote a cheesy little C# program in lab, waited way too long for the bus to show up, came home again. Sat at the computer and talked to silly people for a while, including introducing someone to the wonders of Silent Garfield; also secured dinner for myself. Dinner was stuffing and canned green beans, which was the closest thing I had to fresh greens which is what I am desperately craving right now. Only the beans A) tasted like metal and B) crunched in a manner similar to getting a bit of bone in with your shredded/ground meat product. Um. Yeah, down the disposal with that, then. Canned green beans are not supposed to crunch. They just aren't. Fresh ones, sure, with that veggie-type crunch. But not canned ones and not like this. Yick.

I should go to bed right about now, but instead I am typing a post while listening to the gangsta rap portion of the GTA:SA soundtrack. I really can't go without listening to music because it helps keep my brain busy, but at the same time like 90% of my music collection is currently depressing in some way (genuinely depressing songs and/or songs of lost love; songs of non-lost love; bands I learned of through Chris; bands I enjoyed the music of with Chris; bands whose music I at any point associated with Chris in some way; &c). Radio Los Santos, though, is for some reason "safe" as it were. So is the Silence Of The Lambs musical, but that's only about 20 minutes long so it gets real old real fast if you leave it going.

EXCITEMENT ABOUNDS.

Today I went to campus an hour early, and stopped in at the Eigenmann bookstore for the "course packet" I need for tomorrow's class. They didn't have it. Then I walked to the library and sat there reading (Guards! Guards!; I am giving Pratchett another try) until Guy With The Cheap Textbook arrived. I gave him a picture of Jackson and five pictures of Washington; he gave me a heavy lump of mainly paper. Good deal.

Then I had about ten minutes to get halfway across campus, uphill much of the way (because this is IU; no matter WHAT way you're going, much of it is uphill), to the class that the textbook was for. On the way, I managed to fall, half on the sidewalk and half in the mud. Skinned my knee, though I didn't realize that till I got home and got changed; I was more concerned at the time with A) how long it took to get up and going again, and B) the fact that I hadn't worn those pants but two hours and already they needed to be washed. I did make it to class, though. Hooray.

Then I went through the student union on the way back to the bus stop, and checked the bookstore there while I was at it. No course packet. That's okay. I only have TWO ASSIGNMENTS DUE TODAY BASED ON IT, that's all. Thanks, instructor! Good job of not making enough copies! Sadly, you did not succeed in making me get two big fat 0s, as I went ahead and did the assignments anyway. All it actually took was memory from previous classes (ha ha, I already KNOW how to convert binary to decimal!) windows calc (which of these values is bigger? I believe I will click buttons on the screen and find out!) and Google (prefix encoding, eh? let's see what this webpage says about that!). This will of course not do as a permanent solution, and I plan to ask her what the fuck she's smoking when I'm in there tomorrow morning. I halfway expect to get the song and dance about how if I wanted access to necessary learning materials, I should've gotten to the bookstore earlier, thus depriving someone ELSE of necessary learning materials. Apparently college is a giant game of musical chairs I guess? Pardon me, but my government handout money is NOT paying for Shroedinger's Textbook¹, no matter what you might think. So neener.

This installment of Dinosaur Comics is so awesome that I saved a copy to add to my collection of things that I might print out and put on a wall someday. I used to have a wall of comics back in California. I should do that again here. I don't technically read Dinosaur Comics except I kind of do now because I have started reading Chris's friends list in addition to my own. There are things there that I had no idea he would be that interested in. It is kind of scary and sadmaking that that is so.

On the missing-Chris front I am basically just going on. Most of the time I feel like I'm phoning in existence, and just about all of the time I see little to no point. I just keep slogging ahead, hoping that someday things will not suck, because that is all I have ever done. I think I posted a similar thing a while ago, but it's still true. I just feel kind of empty and dead inside a lot, and I don't cry so much anymore, but I do spend a lot of time lying in bed staring at the ceiling unable to sleep or to feel anything but lost. I don't know if this means I'm getting better or worse.

And that is the obligatory Full, Long, Very Boring Update Thing. Tomorrow I will have to be gone from 8:30AM till 11:30ish, and 3PM till potentially after 9. Thursdays. Hope I get the hang of Thursdays this semester.

Yep.


1. See, because it might or might not be available to me -- I won't know till I hit the bookstore, thus collapsing the waveform.

Holy Zod I think that is the first time I have EVER made a Shroedinger's X joke where I was actually using the term halfway correctly. MAKE A NOTE OF IT.

So I was going another round of the age-old Try To Find A Useful Schedule Of Classes That Is Not Horrific To Have To Live Through dance, and after determining that there weren't really four available degree-progress classes I could take, I went browsing randomly for a filler class. There were some nice-looking ones I had to turn down on the basis of Too Fucking Early, or of being at the same time as an actually needed class. That Topics in Art class on death imagery during the Plague was particularly intriguing. Eventually I borked on into the Philosophy Of Science department, or Philosophy and History of Science, or Science and History of My Spleen, or whatever it is, and stumbled across this doozy.

Can you see why it made me, as the kids say, lawlz?



The really funny part is that the other section of this particular class is on a different topic that looks far more interesting to me: Science and the Occult. I'd say there's no accounting for taste, except then I'd have to go look up a link that for some reason I still remember existing after all these years and oh goddammit too late. Curse you, Gooey-gar. Curse you and your surprisingly useful archive dropdown that saved me having to look for an hour.

Assuming that I can get the schedule I've outlined for myself, or one of its variants that I have also outlined, then I won't be too bad off except on Thursdays. Does anyone ever get the hang of them?

set A = { x | x is a mecha }
set B = { y | y is a person cohabitating with a mecha }
relation R on AxB = { ( x,y) | x gets mad sexx0rz with y }

Sadly, however, the ordered pair ( x = mecha in other room right now, y = Jenny typing this) is not part of the above subset of AxB (ordered pairs where mechas get sexx0rz from their roommates). It is plain to see that, in this case, x does not get mad sexx0rz with y.

If R = { ( x,y) | x gets mad sexx0rz with y } is only true for certain subsets S ⊆ AxB, then the relation is false for any pairs NOT in the subset S, or rather, in S'. The pair (mecha in other room right now, Jenny typing this) is plainly in S', which means no sexx0rz EVAH. HA!

I'm not sure if it follows that way all to the end or not, but for amusement purposes, damn straight it does.

[00:38:47] The Jennybork: AIGH I AM BEING PEACELOVEUNITYRESPECTED IN THE FACE
[00:39:24] wing_zero_ew: what?
[00:39:34] The Jennybork: Gotten a raver giant in the castle yet?
[00:39:48] wing_zero_ew: yes, but not attacked like that I think
[00:39:59] The Jennybork: The attack is PLUR.
[00:40:10] The Jennybork: I looked it up. Peace, love, unity, respect, the 'four pillars' of raver culture.
[00:40:20] The Jennybork: Funny, I thought it was candy, bright colors, flashy lights, and E.


Also, I went to the doctor today about my not being able to sleep for crap the last month or so. We're going to try kicking things back into normal with a couple weeks' worth of Ambien, and then if that doesn't work I shall go back to try other things. After the doctor I went to class. Immediately after the doctor since I didn't get out of there until 4:29 (I know this because the receipt they print out for you last thing before you walk out the door on your merry way is timestamped), and class started at 4:40, and I had no way to get there but walk. And I had no stuff because I hadn't brought my backpack to the health center because I figured that an appointment at 3:20, when these appointments usually take 20 minutes tops, would give me plenty of time to get in, wait to be called, talk with the doctor person, wait in the pharmacy for any prescriptions, and get home to snagz0r backpack. Oy. Also also I just realized that I'm having an extreme amount of trouble making sense of this paragraph, which I know is partially because it is HUGE and rambly but also because I think the Ambien I took is kicking in. Bit early, too; I only took it about 20 minutes ago. Still. If I can just sleep through the night today, and NOT need a three-hour nap in the afternoon... that'll be somethin'. It really will.

The topic of the paper must be approved by the instructor prior to submission. Each student will submit an optional proposal. The proposal should be about 1 page in length (typed) and contain at least the statement of problem and major approach to be used to arrive at the conclusions. Proposals are due no later than November 1, 2004. Submission of an abstract is a student option and a non-graded assignment.

I actually can't quite tell if I need to quickly slam this thing out and email it to the professor (since not getting home till 3 last night == NO EARLY CLASS FOR JENNYS), or if I don't need to bother. "Each student WILL submit an OPTIONAL proposal"? Huh?

I just took a test. It was okay, I guess. Some supereasy questions, some that I had no clue 'cause I wasn't there that day. And two that asked what a midwife was. The first time around the answers were A) a woman between husbands, B) a woman married to a midshipman, and C) boy this is a dumb question. The second time was a variation on the first. Fake questions are more amusing when they're not repeated... unless they're repeated with style. The words "with style" would be linky except I can't for the life of me find the entry I want to link to. Rarr.

I had a nice little talk with Colin after the test. Mainly about the test, but also about my being still a bit sick and having a stabmark on my arm from my visit to the health center last week. Colin's nice. I will manage to make proper friends with him yet. Or... y'know, not. But it'd be nice if I did.

Someone... used... my pillow. It is one of the VERY few items I own that I expect Not To Be Messed With (I can't think of ANYTHING else that I really don't want people touching -- I'm even okay with people using my computer as long as I know they're not snooping), so I am Not Happy right now. I don't know who it was, but mechamom and Quentin are both possible culprits. Neither of them knew that I consider my pillow Private, but mecha knows perfectly well, and so if he allowed this to happen, I shall have to have Words with him.

I like capitalizing things for emphasis.

Colin called me his best friend when I hit Cold Stone today, and then, when I questioned that, revised it to "best customer friend". Doubleyoo tee eff. I'm starting to wonder if he's TRYING to be confusing. Or maybe he IS really just insanely shy out of the social context that he's used to Cold Stone providing. He's just ever so nice when we're on opposite sides of the counter. I want to make friends without a counter, dammit.

Apparently we have to have 25 sources for the 12-page paper due at the end of the semester in health class. And no Internet sources. Owie.

Oytired.