gogmagog | Entries tagged with suckiness

Well, here I am, facing the first week of classes (which starts tomorrow). Again, I haven't posted for a few days, but I guess I do have a reason.

( tl;dr health and mental health stuff )

ANYWAY THAT'S ENOUGH MAUNDERING ON ABOUT MY PROBLEMS, HOW ABOUT SOME FUNNY YOUTUBE VIDEOS

A hilarious Durex ad (NSFW text):

A claymation sequence involving desserts and set to Verdi's La Traviata, which is totally awesome:

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Dashboard Confessional - Bend and Not Break (...why am I listening to this, sob)

Well, I just spent somewhere between two and a half and three hours sandbagging, and as with the proverbial man who flew in from Minneapolis, boy, are my arms tired. (Also my shoulders, and my upper back, and my lower back...)

I was working in the sandbag-passing line between the main library and EPB, and the river was only a few feet from spilling over its banks; the EPB parking lot already had a rather large lake of water in it. By now EPB is locked down, not to be entered until the waters recede (which will probably be on the matter of one to three months, or more...I hear it took 3 months to recede here in '93, and this flood is going to be way worse than '93's), as have most of the buildings between it and the river; those close buildings on the other side of the river closed a few days ago. (The Union closed yesterday.) Pretty much everything else between EPB and the engineering building is closing tomorrow; there was a huge wall of sandbags in front of Lindquist Center.

Traffic is horrible, as most of the highways in and out of the city are closed, as well as pretty much any street around the affected parts of campus. I heard a ridiculous number of fire trucks today, and saw a firetruck and an ambulance with their sirens on pull up in front of the liquor store near my apartment to administer to someone lying on the sidewalk. (Heatstroke, maybe?)

It's been very surreal, being in Iowa City during all this. At least they cancelled summer classes next week.

Edit: I was talking to

lordtravis, and apparently they're advising anyone within the 500-year floodplain, and for a few blocks around, to be prepared for evacuation within the next few days. Guess who lives (just barely) within the 500-year floodplain? D:

GODDAMN CREEK, AND GODDAMN ME FOR NOT HAVING RENTER'S INSURANCE

Fortunately, Travis and his wife

teachingmusic have offered to let me stay with them (in West Liberty, where the flood is pretty much guaranteed not to reach unless Iowa City suddenly gets renamed Atlantis). So I'm gonna work my ass off tonight packing stuff up, Travis is gonna come by tomorrow and we're gonna try to get as much as we can out in his van, and generally try to get an early start on getting stuff out before the evacuation order comes out and things get REALLY crazy (assuming it doesn't come tonight or tomorrow morning). Fun days. D:

Edit 2: OMG I HAVE INTERNET AT HOME AGAIN, YIPPEEEEEE

Current Mood: sore
Current Location: the Old Capitol Mall

Well, LJ once again enters the Ocean of Fail. They've now removed the option for new users to create a Basic (i.e., free, no-strings-attached) account - now your only options are Sponsored (i.e., you have to view ads) or Paid.

What's worse, of course, is that they did it without saying they were doing it, and their only official acknowledgment of it was a news post that basically had a throwaway comment about how "we've made it easier and more streamlined to create accounts! :D" Well, yes, it is generally more streamlined to have only two kinds of account to pick from rather than three, but I have a feeling it's going to result in fewer accounts being created, period. Similarly, this facade of "we reduced this DIFFICULT-TO-READ three-column table into an easy-as-pie two column table! we did it all for the new users!" is blatantly stupid. No one who's able to read a two-column table is going to find themselves utterly stymied by a three-column one, and they just seem to be trying to mask the fact that they're doing it JUST for the money.

Which MIGHT have been fine - I think a lot of LJ members realize that LJ is a business - but only if they'd mentioned it in advance and hadn't tried to slip it under the radar, like a guy who tries to use the "I'm so drunk...oops, wrong hole, teehee!" excuse to try to get his girlfriend to give it up in the pooper.

However, they're also failing to realize that a lot of their members have Basic accounts, and a lot of the stuff paid members come to LJ for is made via Basic accounts, and that a lot of people just won't join if those are the two options. (If, when I'd joined, my two options were "be bombarded with ads" or "pay for this service sight-unseen," I probably never would have come to LJ.) And honestly, I think this has the potential to be a much bigger blow to LJ membership than the infamous Strikethrough. After all, it's a pretty small minority of LJ members who are running around posting underage Harry Potter pornfic, but it's a pretty large majority of LJ accounts that are Basic. And while at this point they're grandfathering in the current Basic accounts, lord only knows whether that will remain the case.

I'm certainly not going to be leaving LJ right now, or any time in the foreseeable future (unless LJ makes everyone ELSE leave, though that's looking increasingly likely), but my Paid account is coming up for renewal in a few days and honestly I'm leery of renewing it now. I probably will end up doing so, but after all, this is the sort of thing that can potentially break a service. And since probably over half my flist are on Basic accounts, if they do extend this to already-extant Basic users - and SUP has made it pretty clear that it wouldn't be beyond them if they think it would be a good business practice - then I can't imagine all that many of y'all would stay, or you'd use the service a lot less. Which would then give me no reason to stay here, since I mostly use LJ to keep in touch with folks.

...I did make an InsaneJournal, just in case. (I'm "yosituna" over there, as some evil person has stolen my "yoshitsune" username, glargh.)

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it made Fandom Wank.

Current Mood: irritated
Current Music: me sniffling

You know how good a mood I was in yesterday?

Today was the exact opposite. (You know it's a bad sign when you find the week already making you want to stab yourself in the brain with a Q-tip, and it's only Monday.)

Of course we had our paper topic mini-bibs today, and I feel like mine completely blew and that the prof was only mildly lukewarm about it. I went to talk to her afterwards to make an appointment for Monday, by which time hopefully it will no longer suck. Then I had to deal with my Rhetoric class, who were fine but I really didn't want to have to be "on" to teach when all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep, or read something mindless.

Then, after making a dash to the Co-op after office hours for "backup bread" in case mine totally blew (as I hadn't sampled any, wanting to have pristine bread for class this evening), I went to my German class; promptly five minutes in, suddenly a migraine (well, a sinus headache, but it hurts just as bad as the genuine migraines I used to have) started to assail my head. After over an hour and a half of German class with what feels like a baby is teething on the back of my right eyeball, I had to beg off once the actual meal bit started (close to 8, the time class lets out). I think everyone thought I was just being antisocial, and using a headache as an excuse, but really, I had no appetite because my eye just hurt so much I was feeling nauseous and wondering if I'd have to make a run to the restroom in the middle of class to puke.

On the way home, still feeling hurty and queasy and generally crappy, I came to my street. Just having to face the treacherous ice-covered sidewalks on my block actually caused me to start crying in frustration. Now, this is not normal for me, so I can only assume I'm coming down with some kind of plague; usually for a day or two before I get sick with some horrible illness, I'm fussy, whiny, and just generally in a bad mood (at least according to my parents). I also tend to get frustrated easily and cry easily. I tried to keep the whiny bitching to a minimum today...not sure I succeeded.

Now I am going to take some Aleve and try to get some blessed unconsciousness before I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again. I took pictures of the breads before I took them in, so expect that to go up sometime tomorrow when I have time; I imagine reports of their tastiness or lack thereof will follow after my next German class, since I didn't actually get a chance to sample them myself. D:

Edit: Aaaand my desk chair just broke. Time to go to bed and hope tomorrow will go better. D:

Current Mood: miserable

GODDAMMIT WINTER I HATE YOU

I slipped on the ice coming home from my German class this evening (we had a test, bleah) and I think I wrenched my arm or something; it fucking hurts. ;_;

See, I wasn't joking when I said I averaged a fall per day; there was no hyperbole in that statement, I literally fall on the ice every single day it's like this! (It's because the folks on the various sides of my block tend to suck at getting their sidewalks clear of snow, and then it melts and refreezes.) And given that we've had this kind of ice on the ground for like two weeks, I'm getting damn tired of falling; my palm still hasn't healed from where I scraped the fuck out of it when I fell on Thursday (I've been putting Neosporin on it daily, but I'm afraid it's gonna scar). D:

...and now I have to do Old Norse and I just wanna take an Aleve and watch Doctor Who. On the plus side, maybe we'll get our now-customary Tuesday blizzard and Old Norse will be cancelled? Seriously, we've got so much snow on the ground right now; on my block they've piled the snow they've cleared off the sidewalks on the median between the sidewalk and the street, and it's considerably over my head (I'm ~5'8"). That's a lot of snow.

Current Mood: sore

Wow, Mondays suck so much harder when a) you're short on sleep (stupid nightmares kept waking me up), b) it's hovering around a balmy zero degrees with negative twenty windchill out AGAIN, and c) they're predicting snow this afternoon/evening, AGAIN.

...I am so ready for winter to be over, if for no other reason than I'm tired of averaging one fall on the ice every day I leave my house.

I do not joke; the block around my house has had snow melt and refreeze so often it's not unlike glass, but it's the only way for me to make it in to class. At least I've wised up enough to wear gloves now, so that when I fall I don't tear up my hands anymore. Still, if this continues, it's only a matter of time before I break something. D:

Current Mood: cold

...When I see things like this on

fandomsecrets, I die a little inside. D:

Edit: Also shit like this; THE STUPID, IT BURNSSSSS USSSSSSS

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Music: the beating of blood in the anger-veins in my forehead

...God, I really haven't posted in a while. Anyway, I should be in Kansas City right now, but sadly due to acts of God, I am not.

I'd been looking forward to going to

rathershady and

courters28's wedding for a while now, ever since they got it scheduled...what, in winter or spring? I had my bus ticket all bought (because again, still no license, argh), and spent Friday getting stuff in order so that I could head out of town.

So I show up at the bus station, all packed and ready to go, and discover that the bus I have to take to Des Moines is 3 hours late. Apparently a rock hit the windshield or something, and so they had to repair it before it could go on along its route. So, this meant that I wouldn't be able to leave until about 9 p.m. This wouldn't otherwise be an issue (it would be a pain making my parents come get me at 3 a.m., but they'd totally have done it), except that I had to transfer in Des Moines to another bus heading to Kansas City - a transfer lasting only 15 minutes.

So basically, there was no way I could take the bus to KC. Slightly panicked, I called my parents to discuss other alternatives - train, driving, etc. - but the only valid one we could come up with was me taking the bus to Des Moines, my stepdad driving the three hours or so up to Des Moines at midnight, then immediately driving three hours back to KC and grabbing like five hours of sleep before driving me down to Springfield, Missouri for Vinnie and Courtney's wedding. (And all this after a full day of work, and he was already running on a sleep deficit.) I felt that would be way too dangerous - he's not the safest of drivers at the best of times, perhaps, and I was pretty sure he'd get in some kind of accident - so my mom and I nixed that alternative. And all the others were out too - Amtrak doesn't run from either Iowa City or Des Moines, only Ottumwa, and wouldn't run on a route that would get me there in time anyway, flight would have been almost as iffy time-wise and flying out would have had to be from Cedar Rapids, which is not that far away but expensive as hell to fly out of (especially on last-minute notice).

So I ended up not being able to go to the wedding, which made me feel sad and sucky because a) Vinnie and Courtney are two of my best friends, and b) if I hadn't been so sucktastic and had gotten my license a couple of weeks ago, this wouldn't even have been an issue. (Also, c) I don't get to see all the other awesome WC folks I'd see there.) Still, congrats to the newlyweds!

And fortunately, unlike most weddings I do have another chance - Vin and Court are having a wedding reception in Colorado in a couple of weeks (since she's from Springfield, more of her family came to that one, and the Colorado one is mostly for his family), and when they first invited me I was invited to both, so I'm gonna see if I can't make that one and at least be at ONE of their weddings.

In other "woes of Yosi" news, my Internet has been down since Thursday evening...when I called Friday, they said they were going to try to fix it, but apparently didn't manage it by the end of the workday. No progress is apparently being made over the weekend (at least my Internet light hasn't come back on), so I imagine it'll be Monday before I have Internet again. Blargh.

In other, less sucky news, I'm now fully into the swing of the semester. I'm taking a Milton class, a seminar on early German literature (so, some European context for all the medieval English work I've read), and a calligraphy class. All of them seem quite interesting and fun. Teaching has been going pretty well, too, after the first week. I'm teaching the public speaking half of Rhetoric, and have had to be working pretty strenuously on my public speaking skills (normally my 1337 writing skillz would counterbalance my speech weaknesses, but that's not an option in this class, so in order to have any authority I'm having to work at it as hard as any of my students - harder than some, I think, which is not doing wonders for my self-confidence but is doing wonders for my motivation). The first week was a bit iffy, but the second week's gone better, and I'm pretty happy with it, aside from one student who's slightly loud and argumentative - while I like and appreciate that he's willing to talk, I wish he wouldn't try to pick fights with everyone in the class over minor semantic issues. (And I can't really talk to him about it, since it is sort of what the class is about, and after the first day he hasn't really been interrupting people or anything, but still, he could be a TEENY bit more diplomatic about it.)

Also, Persona 3 is FULL OF AWESOME AND LULZ, although I'm about ready to throw my controller at the screen at the moment. ( Persona 3 ramblings )

Also, I seem to have acquired an HDTV, eheheheh. But having done so, my reaction now is OMG SO PRETTY, CAN NEVAR GO BACK. Seriously, the PS3 hooked up to an HDTV using HDMI cables is one of the most beautiful things you will ever see. The Wii is really pretty too, though lower-resolution (I think the best it gets is 480p?), and even PS2 games look abso-frickin'-lutely gorgeous, and I can see so much detail that I never could before...all the text in the Persona 3 FMV intro, for instance. And while playing Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou this morning, I noticed that on the door of the Narumi Detective Agency it says, in tiny print, "cutting the Gordian knot," which I never even NOTICED on my old standard-def TV.

More regular posts once Internet is back! I have a book-rec post pretty much written up at home, and there are a few other things I want to post about - I really want to get back into the swing of regular blogging, since I got so out of it during the summer with all the out-of-town-beingness, so expect more once Qwest stops actively sucking ass.

Edit: This weekend is also

aurianrose's wedding, so congrats to her as well!