don't you know by now {you can't turn back}

The basics. I wanted to make myself an arc reactor for mah chest, but didn't get a chance to find the lights I wanted to use, *sadface*. Dressed up like Natalia/Natalie/Black Widow instead, by which I mean I wore almost exactly what I would have otherwise worn (though it was kind of a cross between Natalie and Black Widow, because I was going to wear sort of tight fitting long sleeved/pants stuff like her BW costume, but it was going to be hot, so I pulled out the black skirt and fishnets instead). PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN, so bleakone and I worked on our balancing the camera on the cat tower technique and got some.

ETA: Not-hilariously enough, I managed to have this computer bluescreen with one of those extortion viruses (a fake virus scanner pops up and won't let you open any programs, saying they've been infected) some 4 times between when I wrote most of this out and had to scramble to try and find it (as I'm writing it right in Semagic to post). When you open in safe mode, the automatically saved draft isn't there--Semagic can't find it, and if you go into the folder where the drafts are normally saved, you can't see it there either, but after a few reboots and one finally into normal mode, it came back! I thought it was totally lost, and there was no way I was writing it all up again because most of the desire to gush about a movie is sated by the typing, whether people read it or not, so yay!

So, I wanted to go to the IM1 IM2 double feature, but wasn't planning on it because it cost the same as my entire family is going to pay to go see IM2 on Saturday at the mall theatre and I had these three papers to write (down to just the one by now, though, thankfully) before the morning. But I was very, very pleased with having (I'm 85% sure) resolved the computer system not dropping my chem class issue (their system went down right after I did it, and I think they maybe restored from a recent backup or something and somehow lost that I put through the drop) that was otherwise going to drive me to suicide because I was so fucking angry with going to fail a class just because I quit going after I DROPPED IT.

Anyway, we went for the 9:30/12 back to back Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 2 show.

"They say that the best weapon is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire *once*."


( Spoilers and stuff. And gushing over how I have a massive girl!hard-on for Tony Stark. )


Overall? <3. Awesome. Hurt me a little to pay $16 for a movie that was already bootlegged out on the internet and another movie that I had on DVD, but it was great. Spectacular action fun, Rubber Ducky Junior being flooringly cool, tons of humor, good music, terrific.


( Only minimally resized me picspam. )

But also, there is No Time in my life when I don’t have something I should be doing. Something scholastic, usually, as my MCAT scores sucked on this self-timed practice one I did, which scared me all to fuck because my MCAT scores were what I was counting on to get me into medical school since my GPA isn’t impressive and I’m at a podunk state school (also, why does Word want to capitalize “Podunk”?).

Time management is really biting me in the ass atm. Even just trying to conceptualize what I should be doing when (not helped by the fact that the email system we switched to at school that has all my Outlook calendars I made on the old system refuses to connect to the Outlook program on my computer and give me them back).

( A list of what I'm doing (or not doing) lately: )

Met with the chemistry coordinator for my orgo service thing finally today, though, which I'd been putting off finding the time to do to turn in these forms because they were already late and I'm a wuss. She was uber nice. She's pretty old (60 at least, though I'm not good at guessing anybody's age, especially older folks) and reminded me a lot of my two grandmothers combined--sort of looked like my maternal, but had a slight southern accent like my paternal. Glancing at her bulliton board, it looks like she teaches mostly chemistry for non chem majors, which could be fun. It'd be like teaching high school chemistry--you could do a lot of the fun stuff because it's not like these people are ever going to need to know how to identify 1-propyl 4-chloromethyl heptene on the spot. Not that anybody would ever need to (even if you were a chemist, I'm pretty sure you'd have a second to look it up), but still.

Kinda disappointed about the MCAT/GRE practice thing tomorrow—the gay/straight alliance at school’s having a barbeque that I wanted to go to in the afternoon. Considered just taking the MCAT and going to the barbeque, but no. Shall be responsible. Also wanted to take the LSAT again, but it's at the same time as the MCAT, which is too bad, because the MCAT is going to make me want to slit my wrists, but the LSAT and how I rock it is a decent ego boost. (Acronym translation just in case this is baffling: MCAT=medical college admissions test, the pretest for med school. LSAT=same thing but for law school. GRE=same thing but for generic graduate school; more like the undergrad college admissions tests that have english and math and writing and such.)

I'm in the library atm, plugged into the wired connection on the tablet because I haven't downloaded the wireless update since I wiped it a few days ago and reloaded XP Tablet on it instead of the XP professional I had before that wasn't giving me the tablet functionality regularly. When I tried to load XP Tablet on top of the XP-Pro, like you can do with most Windows OS, it stalled on the install, so I had to reinstall regular XP Professional which ended up with me having one XP-Pro install that worked and one that was stuck halfway through being written over by Tablet. It worked fine like that for a week or two, but eventually the whole mess of things got to where I had to boot into the second OS under safe mode to not bluescreen out and blech. It worked, but was annoying. Going to see if I can get the tech people here to decipher their own instructions for setting up the new university mail with Outlook, because they don't work. Frustrating as hell; I've tried it I don't know how many times on the tablet under various hard drives and OS installs. But because I don't have the wireless (tried to download the update, but the wire here is so freaking slow--we're talking sub-dial up speeds for some reason), I've got to get one of them to come over here, which means unplugging my computer and bringing it over to the desk or leaving it here and going to get one of them, and it's just been less work to stay here and keep typing.

Shall do now, though, as bleakone's probably out of class in a few minutes and we'll be going home where hopefully, I can await the return of Tosh, the computer that was stolen by the fucktards at the Toshiba official repair depot for, from the day I sent it off to today, 36 days. And refused to do anything about it when I called and asked them what the fuck was up with them lying to me and saying 7-10 days. I get that it was on hold for parts for two weeks (sort of--shouldn't the official Toshiba place *have* all the Toshiba parts?) and that wasn't expected when they gave me the estimate, but 7-10 days after I sent it off they hadn't even put it on the repair desk, so that's bullshit.

ETA: Tosh is here! The screen works, the keyboard has been replaced, the fucktards wiped it like they said they wouldn't, but I backed stuff up so I'm not that pissed. What does piss me off is that they didn't replace the screen. In fact, they made the artifacting and little bruises and dead pixels worse. Idk what to do now. I think I'll call tomorrow or Monday or something and see what they say, because there's a whole circular bit in the middle of the screen where it looks like the pixels are half blue. (Most noticeable on a black screen, natch.) This was not there before. Displeased.

So. Found my wallet with my school ID and gym card and such tossed in a box like I'd hoped. This is good. The house looks awesome. Also good. Ianto!cat warming up to me. Good as well. I can find my way out of the house and to school by myself (right, then right, then left), which is también bueno, porque no se las calles en la ciudad de Springfield para nada.

Things that are not good.
1. I’m out of money. Paid rent, bought my lab text for a class, bought socks and salad dressing, and that’s all my cash. Scholarship money doesn’t come in until sometime in September. I’ve got my debit card, but there’s only. . . idk, less than $100 accessible (I think minimum balance is $25 or something), and I’m very, very reluctant to dip into that for anything less than dire, dire emergencies. Plus, some of the things I still have to buy include goggles for my lab classes and gloves for one of them (which I’d already gotten and had sitting on top of one of my boxes of stuff to take down here that was sitting in the front room, but I think Mom thought it was a mistake that I was taking them and took them out on a trip to load stuff into the car), and at least for the former I’m hoping to buy a used set from the chemistry department (they sold them last year) for $5, and I highly doubt they take debit cards. Oh, and possibly my poetry (blarg) teacher’s book—the biggest bullshit ever. It’s a mix of literary forms and is therefore less than 1/3 poetry. I’m begging off having it tomorrow because she just added it to the bookstore requirements in the last week, which is unfair, since I did most of my book shopping 3ish weeks ago.

2. None of my clothes fit. Dreaded, but understandable, as Stupid Metabolism Fail has continued. But I’ve still got them all down here, and not enough hangers (something else I need to buy), so my room looks horrid with boxes and such. I did not think enough about how hard getting dressed for school was going to be when I have all of 5 pants/skirts/shorts that fit, only three of which I’m positive I packed. Plus, it’s so fucking impossible to go buy clothes without wanting to, you know, kill myself when I see the sizes. (I know I’m a whiner about this and plenty of people can go “you think you’ve got it bad”, but when you’re used to yourself in one way and then a few months later you’re 40 pounds heavier, it’s a bitch.) My making my own skirts needs to be worked on more, because then there will be no size tags, XD.

3. I’m in the computer lab at the moment because my 1pm organic lab isn’t meeting because it’s the first day of school, but por supuesto, my 4pm biomol int lab is for only 15 minutes or so. I thought about just asking if I could come to the 1pm meeting of my 4pm one, just for today, so I could get out of here, but if we got seats and lab partners and such it would be awkward to come to the next one at the right time.


And the major one.

5!!!!!. After exactly a month grace period where the bizarre computer screen fritzing stopped, last night it started up again. Began slowly, just blue jaggy lines at the bottom of the screen, spread throughout the whole thing (though you could see the background beneath it), then went to the whole screen covered with thick colored lines/blocks, but when I left it alone, it’d resolve for a bit before starting back up again. It finally decided to cooperate last night, and I turned it off and went to sleep eventually. Started it back up this morning in organic chemistry to take notes and it did the same thing, but then went to the grey of it being backlit but with a totally black screen, then went totally black. Rebooted a bazillion times, gave up. Two hours later, tried it again in biomolecular interactions (sort of biochem, I think, hereby known as “biomol int”) and it booted right up with a good screen and everything. Random. Made the mistake of letting it go to screen saver (I was running out of battery and wanted to let the screen turn off so it wouldn’t die), and when the screensaver popped up, so did the blue fritzy lines, and then it went black. That was 2.5 hours ago, and the periodic rebooting I’m doing as I sit by a desktop in the computer lab hasn’t helped.

So. Last ditch, I check out the Toshiba website again, hoping that there’s some kind of magic fix that’s been posted since the last time I looked around to try to fix it. Happen to check the warranty thing, and lo and behold, it didn’t expire in May (right around when it died the first time) like I’d thought. It expires tomorrow.

Natch, the closest warranty repair center is 3 hours back to St. Louis. At this point, I’m mentally calculating time and such to see if I can get out of my last class and drive there before they close. (Answer: probably not. Plus, seriously, I’ve been here for what, not yet 48 hours?) Shipping it to the Toshiba depot won’t work either, as that obviously takes time, but I call them up (thankfully looking like a dork on the campus phone outside the computer lab rather than on my cell as I was on hold for 90% of the 25+ minute call) hoping I can plead my case and have them start a repair ticket for me today that will work under warranty even though it expires tomorrow, and lo and behold that’s exactly how it works. They’re shipping me a box, I’ve got to call UPS and get it picked up (maybe just find a UPS store and drop it off?), and it’s 7-10 day turnaround (hopefully days days and not business days).

They’re telling me to backup my important stuff, as well. I wanted to hold on to my hard drive, you know, just in case, but the guy said that they’d do some tuneup thing too. It worries me a bit—sure, I have problems with Firefox lately I figured I’d take it), and I’m not even sure how I’m going to be able to do that since I can’t see anything to do that. I tried to plug it in to the monitors on the computers here, but no such luck as they’ve got some freaky-arsed digital plug that doesn’t fit.

That’s the suckmost sucky part of it. And why I’d never sent it off to get fixed during the summer like the idiot I am. I didn’t want to be computerless for 10 days. (Plus, I did very, very little during the summer since I slept straight through normal business hours 9 days out of 10 and mostly couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. Fail, I know.) If only I’d done it then, though, because I’ve got note taking things all set up and homework to do and tests to study for (yeah, quiz in biomol int sometime this week) and one of my textbooks is actually on the computer. Also, we have no TV hooked up yet (DVD player, yes, actual broadcast TV no) and as far as I’m aware, not even an ETA on that, so boredom central.

I kind of still want to cry, I’m so frustrated. School and being in a new place and all is stressful enough without my computer dying on me.



ETA: This is what I mean by blue lines fritzing: ( (picture) )
You can see my icons on my desktop underneath a bit on the left. That’s last night, when it would resolve on its own and then do it again, rinse and repeat.
Then it went to. . . idk, think of a shirt with different sized vertical blocks of color. Sometimes it looks like this:
( (another picture) )
Not my computer, obviously, but similar display. It jumps around between being thin lines like that and ones thick enough that only maybe 6-10 of them fit. Of course, now it’s completely black, not even the grey of it still being backlit but with no display.


Also? The bluefritzing picture was taken with my new phone (demonstration purposes being why I didn't resize it like I did with the rest). Pretty good for a $60 (with $30 of minutes included, so more like $30) Net-10 thing, huh? They fixed a lot of my issues with the last one, like actually being able to connect it to a computer (only can access the micro SD card--not included, natch, but I pulled the one from my MP3 player that I kept audiofics on--and it can only take ones up to 2gb, but you can transfer pictures to the card fairly easily and then get to them on the computer) and taking custom ringtones. (Doctor Who theme FTW. I keep getting people to call me to test it and just not picking up so as to LOLOL.) Still can't get to the internet, just the Net-10 website, and it still charges you eight bazillion dollars to even do that when you accidentally hit the button, but you can lock the browser feature so you've got to type the code to open it, so that's saved me quite a few minutes, LOL.
(It is this one: )

Catching up more on this season's NCIS via the Roku box at home.

OMG, Tony talking to the hooker in 6.18 - "Knockout" where he asks what "services" she was providing for the guy, and she responds "Same as you do for your boss." I just about died. Of course, like I expected, it turned out to be just a very long ellipse, but the following bit was just as good--"Whatever he wants". Tony/Gibbs ftw. I'm not an active shipper of those two, but I've listened to a couple of audiofics for them

Now the hooker's hitting on Ziva. Or, you know, is just being overly sexual with everyone so we know that she's an escort. I like the former.

For this being the "make us care about Vance" episode, I think having him be all secretive and shady wasn't the way to do it. I love him with the kids and stuff, but I'm kind of like "erm, not only are you keeping things from your A-team, you're maybe misusing the powers of the office for your own investigation? Didn't we learn from this kind of thing when, idk, Jenny died?" It was okay when she did it, because we already liked her and sort of knew what she was up to.

My internets keep shutting off from this thunderstorm. I'm trying to figure out why I can't get my copy of Star Trek: Elite Force 2 to work--it's giving me this "OpenGL" error that the interwebs tell me is a video card driver incompatibility with Vista (what else is new--same story with the Sims people stretching silliness), but the one person on a message board that has my same video card and found a solution just says that he used "Catalyst", which is a driver thing for this card, but I've already got that and I'm not sure what/how to fix the settings so it works. And with the nets fritzing, it's even more frustrating.

Oh, and Padma Lakshmi? I want her tongue in my mouth. Which of us it belongs to is fungible. Holy shit, is this food porn.

In mock trial now. OMG, I hate this girl. She comes in and is all I IZ DOMINANT AND A KICK ASS MOCK TRIALER and she's not. She had the nerve last week to say something about us electing a captain, and I was all O HELLS NO, I have been trying to get this team off the ground since fucking September, and even after you joined you missed some 4 meetings because your schedule is "too hectic", so you don't even get to think about that.

It's pretty funny, when we do objections when going through this. If she called it, she keeps fighting it right until she knows she's going to lose, and then goes "Oh, let's just move on," once she realizes I've got her. And tried to do the entire plaintiff case first, not just the case in chief--she was trying to cross one of the defense witnesses before they'd been directed. That or she thought that the witness selection order carried over to witness calling order, even though I'd clarified that already last week and she evidently wasn't listening. She keeps telling the other lawyer to make these bullshit objections every three seconds if the witnesses answer is more than two words on direct or it's what she thinks is a leading question, which fails because she doesn't know what a leading question is, she keeps using the wrong justification for objections and just jumbling about and reiterating the "pursuant to Midlands Rule of Evidence (some random number that's wrong)" bit and not citing an actual rule, and she's overall just. . . not my guys from high school. Basically, her theory of working things is starkly different from mine; I'll just go ahead and say here that we have either beaten her team in HS or beaten someone who beat them, so I'm fairly certain that I've got at least a bit of an idea what I'm fucking talking about. I would take such pleasure in kicking her witness's ass in cross and objecting the fuck out of her direct if this was high school and she was on the other team.

Anger. Seriously. At least I can accept when somebody else points out a good objection. And don't try to point out bullshit ones when I don't know the justification for them or cheat my way out of being deemed wrong. That's the biggest thing. If she was trying to sneak in and steal control because she's. . . idk, an actual lawyer, that's different. Perfect example of a little bit of knowledge being a horrible, horrible thing.

That's this weekend. My witness, who I'd thought would be pretty good when we were going through some questions, looks like she's just going to memorize the script she wrote. Yet again, I need our witnesses back. Fucking dream team, we were. I'm really hoping she polishes it up and goes completely off script, because just like every time a script is written, she's really canned.

<-- That was all Monday. The witness who was supposed to meet me didn't actually show up--I think we may have mistakenly agreed on different days to meet, because according to the only-semi-annoying lawyer (so called because he tends to listen/ask the *less experienced* bitchface rather than me about some things, but that's semi-understandable because he actually knows her. Plus, his boyfriend walked by and kissed him once while we were meeting, and I had to restrain myself from "awww"ing) that like I her, she couldn't find me on the day.

Now it's Wednesday. My life sucks. More MT and Judith making my time of it a bitch. First, why today in particular sucked so hard. Starting at 7:40 or so I was in class until 5:50 (not even extracurricular lab, but lab-lab that took way too long because we had to keep redoing stuff because our results kept being shit), then back to plug in my laptop and putter around looking for the library Torchwood dvd I'd misplaced; never even got to take off my shoes before down to dinner and then the gym and then straight back up to my room to grab my mock trial binder for a no-notice MT meeting. It's almost 11 and I've been in my room a grand total of one hour since waking up.

I want to kill her. I really do.  She's now got Sahara (the president of the frat who DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO GO) being the president, but at least it's not her, because I would have straight up vetoed that.  But it's supposed to be me.

I've got this reoccurring dream/worry/fantasy that she's going to give the closing argument once (out of 4 trials) and suck, and I'm just going to have to be "No.  You're not doing it anymore.  I'm taking over, role limits be damned."

It's going to be a while before I can do these three pages of reflection stuff for Hero and Quest (summary of the weeks' readings, which I only ever did the first 1/6th of the entire book, summary of the class discussion, which is hard as I'm an idiot and never put dates on my notes, and a reflection bit; doesn't seem hard, and yet is so much more difficult than the bazillion-page microiology practice test I should be doing instead because you've got to make it sound good) because otherwise it'd be WARWARWARDIEDIEDIE HE'S (Henry Flemming from Red Badge of Courage) FAIL FOR RUNNING BECAUSE THEY NEED TO ALL BE DED KTHXBAI. 

I'm letting her make me loathe going to MT because it's something I'm frankly really fucking good at and she's taking it away from me.  She took my closing already, which I was fine with at first if it meant I'd just have more time to coach the other lawyer and witnesses who'd never done anything before, but she knows them all through the frat, so they all went "Oh, she's got debate experience and her little podunk town school did MT, so let's talk to she who DOESN'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT A LEADING QUESTION IS OR THAT PLAINTIFF CAN'T CROSS THE DEFENSE WITNESSES BEFORE THEY HAVE TESTIFIED." (Seriously? That second part? I don't think you need to have any experience with law save having seen two episodes of Law and Order to know that the lawyer on the other side asks their questions right after the lawyer whose witness it is asks theirs. Supposedly she just got confused between the order for pre-trial witness selection and calling the witnesses in the actual case, but you know what that tells me? She didn't really read the rules, and yet she's constantly trying to point them out to other people.) Oh, and the kicker. As this is pretty much the entire basis of the case. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A BITCH TO SOMEONE TO SHOW ACTUAL MALICE. RECKLESS DISREGARD WORKS TOO AND IS THE EASIER TO PROVE. W. T. F.

Yeah.  I'm not an overly roll-over-and-take-it person in general, especially in an area that I've got some standing in, but I tried so fucking hard not to just go in and write everything for everybody because I knew that since it was so late that I was finally getting people to stick that we didn't have time to be good, and I'd rather people learned for next year than sucked a little less this year. So when she came in to the picture a few weeks ago (versus me, who's the reason this team exists as I've been working on getting it up and going since September through probably 3 whole teams worth of people committing and then dropping out), I was already being too laid back with the team (whoever I could drum up and keep in for more than a week, with people refusing to commit or change their schedules, as I've bitched about before). Most of it's probably that they all know her. Idk. I've gotten this massive complex, now. She wants me to put this stupid-arsed "haste makes waste" into my opening and I can't do it. I won't, frankly, because sure, a theme works well, but one as stupid and singsongy as that isn't memorable as anything but stupid and singsongy, plus the defense can wipe it out with a couple of easy comments regarding the responsibility to the people to get news out on TV asap after it happens (backed up by the expert witness).

Gah. And I don't have anything memorized yet, and I've got those Hero and Quest journals to do tonight which are going to take a long time like always, and I've got two tests to make up when I get back--the microbiology one I could technically take on Friday as we're not leaving until 9 and it's my 8 o'clock, but I'd do a halfassed job on prepping for both mt and the test, and I can't afford to fuck this test up as I've got an 85% in there after that lab one I had to take after missing the follow up on the three labs before due to carfail (because idk when that'll ever get written--car died 2 hours out of STL, 1 hour from school, just on the side of the highway in nowheresville on Tuesday. Got it towed to a place [that I think was the only one within god knows how many miles], turns out it was a fatal dying, bleakone had to come pick me up because the car's trash; missed everything that Tuesday which happens to be two of the three classes where attendance counts the most). Add the stress of Judith (aka bitchface) and how much I hate losing like I know we will and even worse, having to sit there and have other people screwing up and not being able to object on their behalf or rephrase their answers or something (see MT state semifinals and finals 2007 where I swear I took years off of my life restraining myself from shouting out the response to the objection from the witness bench while my team made a couple of stupid and critical mistakes). And having to fucking open for the plaintiff (never fun, as that's the absolute first thing to happen in the trial) and then direct the first plaintiff witness (the first actual exam to happen in the trial, which is dangerous because you can't get the feel for the judge or the other team's objection strategy before you have to just go--I'm well aware that the person with that job tends to get the lowest scores for that reason, which makes everything worse because it feels like everyone else will think that that's some kind of affirmation that Judith's better than I am if she scores higher when I know she's not). I'm breaking out like nobody's business (as per usual in preparation for the ONE DAY A YEAR I actually put on makeup and dress up and stuff) and having mini panic attacks about compounded stress and the prospect of driving 1.5hrs in a car packed with three four? other people (I don't know what I'm going to do there. I need to be either knocked out with megadoses of Dramamine or allergy medicine or something, which would not give me enough time to recover, or be able to completely zone out and meditate the fuck out of that car--for all seriousness, I'm freaking out just thinking about the prospect--both of which would prevent the rehearsing we should be using the time for.)

GAH. An hour later and I've been just writing this and catching up on the news and such and not doing the homework. Fucking fail. Midnight and I've got hours left of work to do. I need to learn to make these things as short and easy as they're supposed to be. I'm fairly sure I'm overthinking.

I'm also fairly sure I'm close to the border of incoherent from fatigue (not tiredness, really; though that's there to a not-pleasant extent as I woke up some ninetybazillion times during the night last night, it's mostly just exhaustion from the bitch of a day this has been) as seen by the worse my typing is getting. Though point of interest, Chelsea (primary cohab) was listening as she was going to sleep a bit ago to me rock out this keyboard and she asked how fast I type "because sometimes I listen and you're going at it like a ninja", and I guessed like 40wpm or something because that seemed like a number I'd seen before, but evidently if I'd seen that number before and not just pulled it out of the top of my head, it was from maybe 6th grade when I had to take typing class because I took some random online test just now and pulled an 80-95wpm range. That should afford me some kickass job somewhere paying lots of money until I get my MD and make tons more money, I think.

Still no internets. In the basement computer lab atm. Might hit up some random stores just to have something to do. It's kind of depressing here, frankly, in that though normally I'd be fine engrossed in my computer, everybody's parents came down for the weekend and I'm all post-just having to go back to school (I could have gone back with bleakone this weekend, but I didn't think it was worth fighting my overwhelming school anxiety to pull myself back here after only being gone a week) and menstrual and all low-self-esteemed and my computer's being an utter whore, so I'm wallowing a bit.

The computer? *#)(*$(#@!!. I don't know what its freaking problem is. The interwebs, fine. Those are working only off and on. But the freezing and slow running and near-constant hangups are getting worse and worse. The screen brightness won't change and is stuck at dull (which is a Vista control problem). Plus, the godsdamned warranty repair people still haven't gotten back to me. I'm going to call and tell them that by god, if they don't answer inquiries from their website sent IN THE MANNER THAT THEY SPECIFY IS PREFERRED, they sure as hell better hope that I don't write a letter to Toshiba and ask that they be taken off the approved warranty repair center list. In fact, come to think of it, I might do that anyway.

Speaking of writing letters, I've been using my gym membership from home to get into the gym here, right? Because they told us (bleakone and I) that I could, and then used that to sell bleakone a membership there. Lo and behold, we talk to somebody else when my temporary card runs out and it turns out the girl that did the selling didn't know what the fuck she was talking about, and I could only use my Club Fitness membership for a month (since it's a monthly contract thing) and would have to then buy into their contract (the minimum term for which is longer than I hope to be down here, I think) at some more than double the price per month. WTF. If we had known this, there would have been some considerable rethinking before bleakone bought hers, as the major selling point (that the chick used to hawk the thing) was that we could both work out there. Does that not seem like a bait-and-switch out the wazoo?

I can't even describe how pissed off I was. Now, when I need the thing more than ever (the inexplicable weight gain has continued no matter what I do to try and stop it--it's to the doctor next because I'm starting to wonder about hypothyroidism as I've had those symptoms before and it matches up), I'm essentially stranded. Especially during the winter, you're waiting an hour in the gym at school for a treadmill because there are maybe 6 total in the entire sports facility (which is nothing to speak of) which has very restricted hours anyway; there's a stairmaster in the basement that I can get into anytime, but blech. This also means that there's really no reason to keep up my membership at home, but then what will I do when I go home? There was talk at one point when I was first leaving about setting it up so I was just billed for the days I'd be on break at the proportion of my monthly fee at Club Fitness, but then they decided it was too hard. I'd like to try to get them to do that, but I'm not sure if I'd need to mess with corporate (prolly, as they do the actual billing) or go through the people that I know, the latter meaning a better chance of success.

There's a VIP membership level thing that lets you bring friends as much as you want at the Ozark Fitness here that bleakone might switch up to if it's as cheap to do so as I remember, and that would cover me down here since we drive together anyway and are going to try to find an apartment together for next year. But the "switch up to VIP for free" promotion is over, apparently, and when she asked one of the receptionists it was indicated that that would require a rewriting of the contract. What I really want to do is march up there and put all this to them; how she was sold the membership under mistaken/false pretenses and therefore they really should release her from the contract without penalty, but with a contractual membership place like this they don't give a damn about customer satisfaction because you're already paying them the money, so they could just say "to hell with you" and keep on billing.

But the combination of that and the daily billing at CF would work well. Problem is setting it all up, which is a lot of naggling and conversations (the CF ones all having to be done either through my father or over the phone, the former being difficult because he's kinda gymgoing!fail and the latter being difficult because OMGphonehate) and in the meantime, a lot of long boring stairmastering (at least the workout room in the basement of my dorm with the stair thing has a TV up close to the machine; the fitness center has TVs all the way across the room that you can't hear that are never on anything I want to watch anyway).

Not sure when I'm going places--prolly in the nowish time zone, as I've got to go work out (I've got bleakone's pass to use the gym of customer service fail atm since she went home and is a goddess like that) and don't really want to make two trips. IH all these time restrictions--gym closes at 8, which means I've got to leave by 6:15 or so, which means I wouldn't get dinner because the dining center has shitty hours on the weekend (5-7, and being used to eating dinner anywhere from 7-12 I'm physically incapable of eating at 5), so I've got to go exercise now, but there's nothing on TV. *whine*

Oh, and the roommate's boyfriend is staying the night in our room. Not that there will be sexing or anything (I highly, highly doubt it), but just AWKWARD LIEK WOAH. And bleakone's not even here for me to go camp on her floor. Does not want.

Holy shit. Doing some routine computer cleanup, and I went through and got rid of temporary files, recycle bin stuff, hibernation files, etc. The recycle bin evidently had a bunch of crap in it, though I don't recall what a bunch of old Sims neighborhoods and such--I figure I don't ever play more than a family or two at a time anyway, I don't need everything else. And the hibernation backup stuff was a good 3 gigs or so (what, does it play like system restore and keep the last 10 hibernation points or something? It's not like I ever need more than the last one, as I've never seen an option to reboot back to an earlier hibernation point!). But what really killed me? The system restores. I need to look at how often it's backing them up, because I'm now TWENTY ONE GIGS (!!11!one!1eleven!!1!) freer than I was a few minutes ago. Minus the 4.27 that were the normal disk cleanup stuff, and we're still talking almost 17 gigs of pure system restores. I repeat: holy shit.

Did I seriously just see Ianto on a PC commercial saying "I make coffees"?! Because for serious, if I wasn't already a PC girl, I'd be out buying Windows atm.

In the Philadelphia airport right now. LOL at how I've not been posting all the stuff before this that I've been meaning to write up, so nobody has any idea why I'm in PA. Went to Corning NY for the reunion, then up to Rutland(ish) VT for the aunt's house staying (where she'd lost the password for the wireless internets, so virtually no access for me at all there--add that to the no air conditioning and me having to sleep on the couch, which would be fine if the aunt hadn't been getting up ungodly early every day, thus waking me up at same ungodly hour, and scenery or not, I'm happy to be out of there), and this morning we drove down to Albany for me to catch a flight here (Philadelphia) to get a connector back to St. Louis. At 6:30, gah. I tried to get them to switch me up to the 4:45 one here, but since I had a checked bag, I couldn't. I was like "I could run back and get the bag like everybody else and recheck it on the new plane!" but no, because they would have been done unloading by then.

Got here rather surprisingly early--I assumed that planes left when they were scheduled to leave or later, not earlier, but we were up in the air a good 12 minutes pre-scheduled departure and touched down right at 2:50 (Eastern time--I finally got all my watches and computers and such switched perhaps day before yesterday only to have to switch it all back when I get home). So I have to hang out for the next 3 hours or so, but I found a spot with a power plug (not my terminal, but who's really going to check that?) and the airport has free wireless, so I'm content. Not so content in that flight sickness has not quite subsided, however. I should have figured that I'd be sickly, but I didn't realize how much dipping and bobbing and majorslantage (that seriously OMGfreaked me out the first time--when I thought about it, I immediately knew that the plane had to do that to turn, but it didn't stop the pre-thought OJEZUSWE'REGOINGDOWN shudder). I took a bunch of pictures out the window and such, but I don't think I have the cord or I'd stick them on right now. Perhaps, we will check when I finish typing.

First flight plane was seriously the smallest ever. See pictures to eventually (hopefully) be attached. Nine rows of seats, pairs on each side of the aisle with the last (9th) being a bench at the back of five seats. No bathroom either, which is funny, because we (mum, Kaci, and aunt Anna who all rode the hour and a half or so down to Albany with me) were listening to NPR on the way over, and they had their "We give you three news stories and you tell us which one's real" bit and it was about airplanes/airlines, and one of the two fakes (that we all thought was the real one) was about one airline possibly taking out bathrooms from their planes on flights less than 2 hours. Looks like it's already happened--THIS MEANS I WAS RIGHT, ANNA. I was supposed to be in seat 8D, but there was only one lady for the whole back bench, so I asked her if she'd mind me sneaking back there with her. She did not, and thus I was able to get a couple of out-of-window shots too without squishing the woman I was supposed to be sitting next to. And got essentially 2.5 seats to myself, as it was window-emptyseat-her-empty-me-empty-window. I really hope that some sort of the same situation will be possible on flight 2, as that's the one where I'll be in the air around sunset time, which is really when I want to be able to get the out-of-window pictures.

Wicked good timing with the flights, though. We bought the ticket on the 7th, and if we had waited until the 9th, I would have had to cough up $15 to check a single bag. And since it's before methinks August 1st, I still got a free Diet Coke on the plane.

Gah, stomach, stop being queasylike. You're on the freaking ground, what the hell?

Cool things about this airport. The food. They've got an A Bon Pain, which I'd been wanting to try out because of their whole menu of < 200 calorie foods. They have a smoothie place with < 100 calorie smoothies, too, which is win. I might end up trying both at some point, as no lunch was had (due to driving to and then being on a plane), though admittedly the breakfast happened around 10am, and thus the hunger has not returned (killed by the airsickness?). And it's all guaranteed to be street price, which means it's not going to kill my wallet (or, you know, will anyway because Philly's street price can't be cheap, but at least it's not going to be hugely more).

So sadness about the not getting on the 4:45 flight back to STL, but I have stuff to do, so it's cool. And I'm still getting home significantly sooner than the 13 hours of driving that it would have taken were mum ready to go home (I've got to work on Monday doing this teaching assistant gig for a summer camp for gifted 1st and 2nd graders, she loves Vermont too much to leave after only 5 days) or the 25+ hours of Greyhound bussing or train that was the second choice (Anna found the flight, thank god, and it was only like $20 more than the by-then sold out train and actually less than the bus). Though AIR CONDITIONING, PHILLY, WOULD BE NICE. It's probably just warm because I'm in the terminal area, where they've got the connectors to the outside and all, but it's 88 degrees in the outdoors and not a whole lot cooler in here.

O LAPTOP PLZ STOP THAT. It just had a popup thing telling me that Windows Media Player found somebody else's (the lady sharing this outlet with me, permaybehaps?) computer and can share files with her. NO THANKS, LAPTOPPY SIR. This unsecured network thing does not happy make me, especially since my Norton Anti-Virus trial that came with the computer ran out a few days ago. Scary.

So, my brother got a girlfriend... Tuesday or Wednesday or so. This, methinks, is his second or third girlfriend, which puts him squarely beyond me irt: dating experience despite my being older, which I'm sure should be more bothersome to me than it is. (He hasn't realized that yet, thankfully, or all the advice I have been giving him about where to go/what to do would be completely ignored, which is not really something he could afford, LOL). Thing that is bothersome? She just came by for the first time to pick him up for a date (as neither yet drive), so I only just now got to see her. And she's so far past way too hot for him that it's not even funny. Except it actually is really funny.

It's just odd. My brother's oddly charming in that dorky, rumpled teenage kind of way, and he does clean up well, but she's hot .

I'm entertained, And further entertained by the fact that I've written this whole post on a tablet PC that my dad borrowed from somebody to test out as a prelude to possibly buying it. As cool as it is to have handwritten all of this--and if I slow down my writing a bit and do it significantly bigger than I normally would, I don't even have to make that many corrections--I type like nobody's business. A single correction takes several pen clicks, and I'm pretty sure that I type faster than my standard, scribbly chicken scratch note-taking handwriting anyway, much less the bigger, clearer writing I've got to do on here, anyway. Add that to the fact that it's a pretty lacking laptop in all the more technical aspects (1.40 GHz, 1.24GB of RAM, only a 30 GB hard drive), and I'm not really impressed. Fun to play with, but it wouldn't cut it as the kind of laptop I need for next year.