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

We got so much less snow than even the little we were predicted that school hasn't even bothered to post their usual mocking banner on the site that says
"We know some people have school canceled BUT NOT YOU MUAHAHAHAHAHA."

AGH THIS IS TWICE ALREADY THIS YEAR that pretty much every school everywhere is closed while there somehow manages to be a giant weather-hole around mine. (I'll concede that cancellation isn't deserved today, but I almost lost my car to a telephone pole just trying to get out of my neighborhood last time they didn't call it off, so I'm a trifle wary.)

SCHOOL WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN TO US.  Nefarious plot to steal our tuition money and then make us so miserable (and/or dead from driving on roads that apparently the city can't be arsed to plow) that we drop out I SEE WHAT UR DOING HERE.

Ahh, Majel Barrett Roddenberry. Science fiction TV will not be the same without thee.

In other news. Home. Cold. As per usual. People driving idiotically slowly on the highway--I promise you guys, it was just rain. And not even enough to turn my wipers on past the first notch. That doesn't deserve a 25mph slow down. It was probably the most active I've ever had to drive--usually I just stick my cruise control on and leave it, passing people when I need to in order to stay at the same speed. Nope. Constant adjustment because nobody could stay steady. It was nuts. And probably contributory to my burning a half tank of gas, which is more than I expected.

It feels like there's some kind of a three or six or someodd-week window (they always give the parents some amount of time that you're not supposed to visit your kids for that reason) where things are supposed to click and you're supposed to adjust to being away from home and I somehow missed it. It's not even like I was particularly close to my family in the first place; yeah, I love them and all, but I spent most of my time when I was at home in my room by myself. It kinda scares me, you know, in the ferocity of this. . . it's not homesickness, really, so much as it is hate-thereness, I think. I've got no idea. I can't articulate why I dislike it there so much (sure, I can bitch about whatever issue is currently pissing me off, but it's more a general loathing of the entire situation), but to sort of put things into perspective, I checked my Outlook calendar that I've got all my class times and everything typed into this afternoon and had a panic attack over the prospect of going back there. Not even just worked myself into one, which I'll do if I'm upset and let it compound, but it was sudden--there wasn't even a semi-conscious thought process of "Oh, man, schedule. I've got class on Monday. That means I've got to leave home. And go back to school. I hate school! *freaks*", it just hit--and it lasted a long time. And even after the actual attack was over, I was mentally shaky and feeling all self-destructive and bad.

So that's no fun. Break in general, though good at the beginning, got pretty not-enjoyable. As Dad got a call from bum Aunt Chris (re: bum--see the last time I made a post where things happened almost exactly like this) saying that Grandma had her second stroke this week (our reaction: OMGWTF THANKS FOR TELLING US AFTER #1) and somebody misrepresented/misunderstood/whatever the gravity of the situation (we sort of think that Chris needed a break from helping Grandma extra over the last few days when one of these last strokes mussed up her mobility, and she let Dad believe that things were really bad so he'd come down and help out. My opinion? You're living in your mother's house, driving her car, supplementing your measly sales income with her social security and your father's pension; bitchplease, shut up and help out your mother) and it essentially boiled down to Mom spending all of Friday writing out lesson plans for next week in case she had to get a sub for a funeral and Dad and Tyler leaving within about an hour of the initial phone call to go down there.

She's doing a lot better, Dad says--if I've said it once, I've said it a million times: if I inherit anything from this woman (besides, erm, breasticles), please let it be her stroke resiliency. I have no idea how many she's had, but she shuffles around for a bit (worse than usual--I think one of the early ones screwed her gait up, because she's shuffled more or less since I can remember noticing), has some short term memory loss (she loses a couple of days around the stroke that I'm not sure she ever gets back, and loses larger chunks of time/people transiently for a short period but does get that back), but that's it. You know, I think. It's hard to tell when I see her as rarely as I do what's stroke and what's just oldperson.

It was weird that afternoon. I was all lol!emotional vulnerability. I'm usually the stoic one in things like this (not even because I'm trying to or anything, just because I'm fairly cool with death), but was all . . . not. I think (self-psychoanalysis time!) I was picking up on the emotionally charged atmosphere with my dad freaking out (he really thought he needed to get down there quick until he called right before leaving to tell Chris that he was coming down and his mom answered the phone, LOL) plus my subconsciously being a selfish bitch pissed that my first visit home was getting screwed up by this by itself, and more so by Dad and Tyler leaving, plus the whole situation being reflective of how I've been more fearful lately because my dad's diabetes got bad (and by bad, I mean good--his doctor was happy with his control, but her happy meant he was having lows a lot more often. With diabetes, high kills your organs and you over time, lows kill you overnight, especially once you become less sensitive to them as everyone does; then it takes a glucose of say 40 to give you the shaky warning--or you lose the sick feeling altogether and skip straight to the disorientation, like Dad now does--that 70 once did, even though the setpoint of unconsciousness at 30 hasn't changed, you've just got less warning to do something about it) right before I left, and how I feel out of the loop of the whole family everything, and the fact that (as evidenced by the later-occurring/aforementioned panic attack) I seem to be an emotional wuss.

But yeah, he called and Grandma picked up, which surprised me because, you know, I sort of figure post stroke -> hospital. But then again, bumaunt earned the bum title from last stroke Grandma had last year when she didn't make her go to the hospital (Grandma didn't realize that there are things you can do for strokes now because I think her last one was a while back, so she just made an appointment with her GP for Monday morning), so perhaps not that surprising--I've yet to hear the medical story. From my side of the conversation (just listening to Dad talk to her), it sounded like she was doing pretty well. So then it became more of an "I have the weekend, if she's had two strokes in a week things can't be good no matter how well she bounces back, so I'd better go and be with her while she's still there mentally and before she doesn't bounce back as well one of these times", which I totally understand is still filled with that urgency for him--he's mentioned before that one of his biggest regrets about when his dad died is that he didn't get down there until after he was only in-and-out (and mostly out) mentally.

Dad's hoping to leave really early Sunday to get back around noon (yeah right, but hopefully) so we have a few hours to hang out before I've got to leave. Still not like I'd hoped--we were going to go fishing on Friday, and then he and mom had signed up for a canoe trip together all day Saturday, and I was supposed to be able to do about a bazillion things I'd planned and didn't get to because I've been feeling off.

Weekend update: Alexandria Edition

All this hooplah on Friday. Didn't do much else. Bummed around playing Sims: Castaway Stories (beat that in two days, somewhat disappointingly, and I'm not crazy about the gameplay for the open ended bit as it feels much more limited than the Life Stories one did), went to Sam's with Mom, exercised, had a nice feta, corn, roasted chicken, and Italian dressing salad for dinner (it's crazy--salad's all I eat at school, and yet throw in the chicken and the feta and the dressing, none of which are available there, and it's a totally different and significantly more delicious animal), did some more computer bumming, went to bed.

Saturday: was planning on getting up early to workout at 8, do the yoga class at the gym at 9 (as I've been paying them for several years for free group classes included, and when do they finally get classes at my location? About three weeks after I leave), and then leave at 10 to go see Obama at noon, followed by further shopping (the rest having been done with Mom Friday night) for the church family night chili dinner, which I'd then go down to around 4 to start stuff cooking (some eight pounds of pasta, mostly, as well as prepping plain spaghetti sauce and salad) for dinner at 6. The first two didn't happen because I was up until 5 or 6 playing around on the computer. The third didn't happen because I was getting ready to go and turned on the TV and heard that there were some thousands and thousands of people that had been down there waiting for hours already and the gates didn't even open for another 30 minutes, and that if I went, the time spent looking for somewhere to park (even in the closest Metro carpark; almost especially so, as it's the only one that even approaches the county, so it's always packed) would singlehandedly offset any benefit from Obama's energy plan. Went to the Jewish Community Center's costume sale instead, and picked up a bunch of stuff for Dad's classes for cheap. They had pretty much a whole set for doing Beauty and the Beast that I really wanted, but it wasn't exactly what he was looking for with his kids doing Shakespeare and all. Got a really nice dress, though, that I think is perfect for mideval stuff, as well as a flouncy underskirt that I'm saving for my colonial costume for taking Kaci to the Feast of the Hunter's Moon next year with the middle school Fiddlers.

Then I ran about shopping for church dinner food some more because the costuming took longer than I expected (I was looking for "the auditorium" instead of it being inside the auditorium inside the community center), and finally got back and did the food. Served the Catholics in my Obama t-shirt and got more pleasant comments than I expected, especially considering that it's almost always just old people that come to these things (which sucks, as it's family night and there's never really any family mingling because the old people all just stick together in the same groups and tend to exclude anybody that's not been in the church since before the last ice age--I mean, my parents have been going there since before I was born, and yet 90% of their conversations have to do with church stuff way before that). There were really no comments at all besides a handful of people asking if I went and a few that I knew--Rick, my volleyball boss and my friend Celeste's mom-- and one other random guy actually articulating support. Not even Father Jim had anything really to say save some remarks about how it seemed the entire city was there (but then again, I've been told he doesn't talk nearly as much anymore after he had a stroke a bit after I left, which sucks, both because I really like him and because he's always been v. v. softspoken and shy to begin with), which was a tad disappointing because I'd have loved to go three rounds on how the Catholic policy on birth control is an abject violation of their claim to honor and preserve the sanctity of life with somebody there.

Thing that made me angry: 8 people signed up to bring chili, 4 did because fail--even when my mom and the mother of a schoolmate of Kaci's brought some without having been included in the 8 count, we still ran out of all the "normal kinds" very quickly with only about a spoonful of ground turkey chili (that I think had been left for gone, but I managed to scrape it out because that was the one I wanted), and a little of each a v. hot white chili and a v. mild gluten-free chili left when the noodles line had finished and I got over there to see what was left, less than 20 minutes after mass ended. We had plenty of spaghetti and sauce left, though, so nobody totally missed out.

Then exercised, then hit up a couple of stores on the way home (the Farmer's Market because I wanted to check on pumpkin prices and because fruits/veggies yum, Big Lots because mom told me to grab some extension bar thing that I got the wrong one of--prolly because the best I can describe it as is "extension bar thing"--followed by Walgreens because I had thought that they had free after rebate stuff that I wanted, but it turns out that it was last month), then got mom to glob my hair up with henna while watching Andromeda dvds followed by the opening sketch of SNL (assuming Palin wasn't in any of the rest), then spent the last several hours (literally) writing this.

Whew. Caught up, more or less. Far more detail than anyone cares about, but ehh.

There's a list of things I want to do tomorrow, including going bowling, to this Natural Living Expo, carving a pumpkin, and tie-dying a shirt (all of which sound sort of random but are in fact quite easily possible), but I've got to leave before 7 and Kaci's got two soccer games tomorrow. After having (missing, actually, as nobody realized) one yesterday, because they're making up for the fact that they were rained out some 3 weeks already this season--I tell you, she got signed up for this city team rather than play with the school like she used to or the church like I used to, and they're a bunch of wusses. Both the city (not even our city, LOL, but one a bit farther West that we tend to mock a bit; I have no idea why that one, but somehow a bunch of her old teammates from the school team that didn't get going this year for whatever reason all went out there) and the school teams are, though the latter will at least play in the rain. I have pictures from when I played for the church of us playing in a freaking ice storm. (I assume--the playing happened, and pictures tended to happen, though I couldn't tell you where they'd be.) Us Catholic sports girls took our shit seriously.

Concluding thoughts (at least until I come up with more):
I'm almost painfully thirsty and have been for the last 500 words or so, but don't feel like getting out of bed until I'm done and am about to go to sleep.

The plastic wrap extension to my shower cap holding my henna'd hair in (too much hair, LOL, especially when thickened by goop) keeps sliding down and covering half of my eyes. I can't get it to stay up.

My laptop has another screen glitchy bit (this one's just a dark spot that looks like it's just a drop of scum on the screen until you get close and realize that it's underneath). I found out, though, that there's a place only about 20 minutes away from here that does warranty repair, so I won't even have to ship it in.
Best Buy was trying to tell me over the summer when I first asked that I had no warranty at all on this thing since I didn't buy theirs and had to give it to their Geek Squad to fix (which they couldn't do, as this is a manufacturer only replacement) for mucho dinero, the thieving arses.

I iz headached. Off and on the entire time I've been here. But my Springfieldhumidity-induced acne is almost totally gone after only two or so days. It's weird, considering that St. Louis is the place that people joke "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" about, because of all the rivers, not Springfield.

Speaking of weather, *temperaturegasm*. God, it's beautiful. You turn the air conditioning on in the car if the sun's shining on you, but I ran to get something out of the car around 10:15ish before SNL and was hustling because it was chilly and the grass was quite cold. It's camping weather--it might be a tad too cold to be really comfortable at night outside (at least for me, as I've got a very range of comfort I can fall asleep in--even if it's totally fine during the day, the same temperature at night and I'll be far too frozen to sleep), but it's the exact kind of crisp cool that would make sitting in front of a fire just amazing.

I'm falling asleep while I write this. Holy crap, I started typing this easily 2 hours ago. Nonstop typing, pretty much (at least for the last hour of it since I first really looked at the clock), not even the normal "type some, fool around playing a game/checking email/whatever, type some more, etc." thing.

Re: troopergate.

How do you just "not honor" subpoenas? I say just throw the whole lot of them in jail for contempt. Reaffirm to America that working for the government doesn't mean you can flout its laws.

'He also said the employees would refuse to appear unless either the full state Senate or the entire Legislature votes to compel their testimony.'

Erm, I would be like "Speak for yourself, Republican Attorney General and appointee of Governor Palin Talis Colberg, sir! I, as an employee not wanting a jail sentence, will cooperate fully. I don't even like this Palin person."


Re: House promos. 58 seconds in to this one on YouTube (with annoying watermark, grr).

Probably just in House's head, I think most of us have pessimistically decided. (Is this not irony, however, considering what I just posted about earlier today re: Remy and patients?) But the question is which episode is this occurring in? I'm thinking next week's; this was a pre-premiere promo, thus not giving them too many finished eps to draw footage from. Plus, I've been looking at cast credits, and I think she resembles Christine Lucas, possibly? But I've never been good at that.

And her name is now "Rena"? It took me so long to get used to "Remy" because that's such a weird name. Thanks, tptb. Looks like somebody on the House crew just screwed up, as it was changed on the website and then changed back.

Well, however it plays out, Olivia Wilde needs to stop being so hot. (What is this strangeness, you ask? Alexandria's got the hots for a celebrity who's not at least 1.5x her age? I know, innit?)

In other news. As of 8am this (Wednesday) morning, citizens of Baytown, TX (where my family is) can now in an hour and a half get their booze on again, after alcohol sales were prohibited last Thursday by emergency Mayoral order. Because hurricane survivors and looting and such are hard for a police force to manage. Drunken hurricane survivors (and drunken anybody in a place where water/food are questionable or you have to do special stuff to make sure they're comestible) would be hell to deal with.

And speaking of weather, O THANK YOU WEATHER GODS. Because since that nasty storm, it's been beautiful. As in, high of 57 one day beautiful. And will continue to be so, if forecasts are to be believed (they are not) until the middle of next week. When it gets rainy again, guh.

I know who's going to win the Sri Lankan Civil War.

From the Wikipedia article.

"Apart from the LTTE, there initially was a plethora of militant groups. The LTTE's position, adopted from that of the PLO, was that there should be only one."

The Highlander reference kinda makes itself. I have no idea what that really means in context (mostly because it's 3am and I've only recently realized that I don't really have to become anything more than slightly conversant in the war to give 1/5 of a 5 minute speech on it when chances are nobody else even knows it's going on, and therefore I'm forcing myself not to bother to figure it out).

In other news, [ONOES, it's complaining tiems!] the luck of Alexandria continues. Rained like a bitch today. And it was my day of all 1 hour classes and really long rides between each one. So I pretty much only ever just began to dry before having to go back out there. Plus, construction all over makes the puddles (this school = underwater) mucky and now all the white bits (that admittedly, weren't overly white before today, but a lot closer than they are now) are this murky, rusty, red-brown. Butwaitthere'smore. Really nice, cushy bike -seat? Absorbs water. Butt = soaked even worse than the rest of me. Which is horrible-r because nobody likes soggy hair/shirt/knees-of-pants (as that's what points up whilst bike riding), but soggy underwear are even worse.

And then this "Don't Forget the Lyrics"-esque game in the evening. And it was hilarity. In that I had been joking that, on the first real elimination round, I'd know every other song in the round but the one I got. Guess what happened? Not only was I actually very familiar with every other song in the round (I think out of the 10 or so, 7 of them are currently on my MP3 player and the other three should be), it wasn't just that I didn't know the words to the song I got, but that I'd never heard it in my life. And I've got a pretty good music memory, so I'm confident in that. LOLZ.

Plus, dinner's tofu wraps were fail. I was so excited about that, and even more so when it appeared that they had spinach tortillas to go with them, but no. Twas just green flour tortillas and the tofu was blech; not cooked or anything (or even warm!) like I'd expected, but some kind of eww tomato/onion/chive flavor (that might have been good if the tofu was warm, maybe lightly stir-fried, but coldmushysoft, no).

Downloaded the software update for my TV tuner computer thing, which turned out to be freaking gigantic, and now I'm getting nasty automated emails about my being more than 75% towards my weekly bandwidth. Thanks, Pinnacle, for not only not including Vista support with your software CD, but not even just making it a patch but rather a 1.3gb full software download. Whores.

And the gym's closed pretty much all day tomorrow (from 2pm on, which doesn't do me any good as I've got class until 4) for a stupid football game. On the same note, had to do beginnings of fitness testing stuff in gym class. What happened to me, LOL? In middle/high school, they used to make us do those same types of tests, and I know that my 1 minute situp number was well into the 40s, not mid 30s. I was making sure to do the maximum range of motion on them, though (more than I actually had to, methinks), as I was partnerless and therefore having my feet held by the teacher (and therefore unable to skimp) which may explain it.

And now I'm really, really thirsty (because tortilla chips = salty), but don't want to get up and get a drink for fear of waking up Chelsea. Will anyway, though, because thirst > sleep.

Reading the "top news stories" blurb on the Yahoo mail opening screen.

Now, you know I'm all about gay rights. Whoo, California and all. But wouldn't you think, just in terms of significance, that "Hamas says it's reached cease-fire with Israel" would beat out "Gay couples rush to get married in California" for the top/featured spot, just by a little? I suppose there's an argument to be made that the latter is more personally significant to the majority of Americans, but, erm, it's really not. In that, you know, terrorism and stuff used to be one of America's big concerns, did it not? Evidently news about it is just too high-brow for the America that is treating this whole thing as one big documentary of the road to Ellen and Portia's wedding.

Things that are not good:
It is 80 degrees in my house (according to the thermostat, though it feels much hotter).
I just got home from work, where there was a group of hellaceous kids that wouldn't listen for anything.
I'm only two hours away from having to drive back to work for a second shift because the other girl called in sick.
This is after having taken two shifts yesterday too and not getting to bed until 2 because I got in so late after the second one.
During these two shifts yesterday, I totaled 40 kids--15 of them simultaneously at one point, 4 of which were under 4mos.
Because of this split work thing, I've seen my grandparents (who are in from Texas) for very little time over the few days they've been here, and I feel bad about that, but our schedules aren't lining up.
These grandparents are currently staying in my room, so I kicked my mom out of her+Kacy's room on to the couch (which she was surprisingly cool with--she's not happy, but she did it, which is more than I'd say for myself), but I now have to share a room again, don't have any of my stuff because it's all in there with them (most importantly--see number one--a fan), and since mom's on the couch, get bitched at when I get home late and then try to cook dinner (or leave my room during the night for any reason, because she can hear it).
I still have to figure out how to tell this bossguy that I'm quitting so I can go on vacation for the reunion up in upstate NY over the first week of July (and, you know, the whole not-enough-pay issue, but the NY adds the time factor).
Which is made harder by the fact that he's giving me these extra shifts because he's planning on firing the evening girl, which would make him have to hire two people for childcare.
And, for something completely different, I've had a stomach ache since Saturday that refuses to leave.

Hodogs, I was starting to get antsy. Power went out for about an hour there, and though we kept the doors and stuff closed enough that the air conditioning (that was barely on to begin with for money saving purposes, but still) stayed in so I wasn't quite to cooking temperature yet, it was starting to get bothersome. Mostly in that I was in the middle of trying to set up my birthday party (because I keep having to juggle the date around because everybody's busy) and then the internet kicks off. It's not that it was horrible or anything, but it makes me worried; if the power shuts off from people running the air conditioning (I assume; it also could have been these people a few houses down that are constructioning--loudly--pretty much every daylight hour since mid-May) this early in the year (when people aren't running it full blast because it's not hot enough for that yet), what's it going to be like later? This is just like the stupid power company--remember all those major blackouts we had last year that lasted for weeks? They just suck, to be honest, and people are really pissed off, because they pull crap like that and aren't able to get people's power up for ages and then ask for tax increases like idiots.

Ahh. Anyway, mah fan has returned to the cooling of me, and my light is back on (though lol, I actually had the main light off anyway before for temperature purposes, so it's only this little bed light thing I've got going on, but it's nice to be able to see the keyboard again), and my laptop is charging up again, and my internets now are working, and everything is right with the world. You know, to an extent.

Some more stuff.

Re: politics. OMG, POLITICS. From the Air Force guys retiring to the nomination to the bitchfests in the senate over the climate bill to the Gitmo arraignments to the Supreme Court decisions that are supposed to be coming down in fairly short order, there's some pretty major stuff going on, and I'm excited.

Re: work. Quitting, though idk when, because not only is it minimum wage for a 30 minute commute on only 4 hour shifts, now I'm being told that because I was already a member of that gym network, the free membership that I was promised won't kick in for either 60 or 90 days (boss keeps telling me different because he is fail for that and many other reasons) of a probationary thing, and now he's telling me I've got to cough up some $30 for a uniform shirt. Seeing as I'll be off at school less than 90 days from now, this means there's absolutely no reason for me to stay there. I mean, it's kinda fun working with the kids (though not fun when, in the early hours when there aren't often any kids there, I have to wipe down the machines and clean the bathrooms and answer the phones and work the front desk and such--it's the work that the front desk people/associates are supposed to be doing, only shunted down on me because I'm younger--basically, I'm doing everything they do except being able to sell memberships, which is what gets you the commission; I'm getting their shit work so they can focus more on the memberships and make more money), but there's no reason for me to not just get a minimum wage job that I can walk (or at least not drive as long) to and be actually doing what my job description says I'm supposed to be doing and not have to buy some stupid-arsed, overpriced polo shirt.

Re: Shakespeare. I haven't gone to the festival yet (though various groups of siblings/parents have--the first time they ended up leaving without me because carload 1 thought I was going with carload 2 and carload 2 thought I'd gone with carload 1, the second time I was too tired from work), and I keep trying to arrange this birthday party thing, but like I said before, people's schedules are fail. As is the weather; the schedule thing wouldn't be nearly as bad if there were more than 1 day a week that it's not supposed to rain. Seriously, the calendar has had perhaps 4 forecast non-rainy days since I started watching for a good day about a week before the end of May.

Places Alexandria didn't apply sunscreen before volunteering all afternoon at the Earth Day festival:

Scalp. Specifically, the part of my hair. It's a vicious shade of red right now. I mean, expecting it to blister up in the next day or so, red.

Inch and a half square area of back of left hand. There's this perfect quadrilateral dude of dark pink (nowhere near the scalp color, but still), and then some assorted splotches that come out from/near that. I had almost the exact same thing last year; it comes from holding bits of artwork and cutting out things for kids and other such hand-exposing activities. It's only on the left, though, which is interesting. That might be because I use the right more, so it's not still often enough to get burned. Or I prolly didn't wipe/wash the sunscreen off of my right hand as well (you know, like you do so your hands aren't intolerably greasy) after I applied the stuff to the rest of my body.

Spot near the corner of my left eye. That one twinges me a bit every once in a while when I blink.

Lips and area surrounding them. That one twinges me even more than a bit. . . pretty constantly. That's the only one that's causing me actual pain atm, as it's the second worst and as long as nothing touches my scalpstripe that one's okay.

Twas fun though. Felt rushed, as always (last year the sibs came at the beginning of my work time and were totally bored/done by the time I got off and so I got maybe 20 minutes to look around), because I had to get home to hit the gym and then run off to volleyball. I really want to have the time to actually go through and look at everybody's (or, you know, more people's) everything instead of just scanning the booths and hitting the ones that have samples, LOL.

And OMG, so many people were there. Put it this way. Normally, getting from the exit on the highway into the park and into a parking space and then into wherever in the park you're going is going to take you a little bit if you're going on a nice day and weekend, simply in the parking space-finding, and then perhaps a short walk if you couldn't park right up close portion of the time. Not, however, more than an hour. 30 minutes of which were spent trying to go about 5 blocks down the road before even getting into the park. This is when the below-mentioned weather got brutal--hiking up and down the hills of the park about 3x as much as was needed on the way there (because I had to park really far away and then didn't know which way the festival was, so ended up retracing my steps several times) and (though in a straight line this time, thankfully) with a massive bag of binders and other miscellaneous items I rescued from the recycled art booth I was working at on the way back.

Weather was gorgeous, though. A bit warm in the sun, but that's to be expected. In the shade, though. . . this would be a day I point to when asked what would be the ideal weather for my wedding or sommat.

Failed to wake up at a reasonable time again today (closer to noonish than 1:30pm ish this time, but still bad), so slept late in the afternoon, so woke up really late and only got home from the gym around midnight. Couldn't find the soup mix that I wanted to make (and it'd been lying around in the way for ages--somebody finally moved it somewhere right before I decided I wanted it), so putzed around looking for different things, couldn't get the microwave to cook my vegetables (because I usually boil them in there for a bit to get them going before throwing them in the pan to cook the rest of the way--and I know I've got to be doing something wrong there because this time it took more than 30 minutes to get them just a tad soft--prolly because there were too many things in there and it couldn't heat up that much water), so it's 2am and I'm still making dinner. Gah. Especially because I'm not even that hungry (or really, hungry at all), it's just more of a "Gotta eat something because you haven't had dinner and otherwise your metabolism will screw you with your pants on." So veggies and a catfish fillet.

Re: Saint Louis weather. You've got to see it to believe it. Hilarious lately, I tell you. Major rainstorms and flooding out the wazoo last Monday and Tuesday (to the point that the rivers all still have flood warnings). In the 40s and 50s degree-wise those days. Up to a high of 70 on Friday. Wake up Easter morning to a pretty heavy snowstorm. Back to murky, nasty, overcast rain all afternoon today with thunderstorms in the late afternoon and again right now, and it's mid-40s (and close to it inside--must go find sweater). IL this city.

And now my food is gone. LOL. I was complaining about how I was cooking it when I wasn't really that hungry, and now I finish it and I'm killer hungry for more.

Otherwise, things went well. The weather is shitty, which makes my hips hurt, plus I hadn't eaten in a while, so I made my workout on the shorter end today, but still within my acceptable range. Had my Spanish homework done, got not only all the points but the bonus on the Spanish vocabulary quiz, peer edited somebody's paper in English that made me confident that mine was at least the second-worst in the class, and (since I didn't really have anything to do during my free periods since I won't be there tomorrow) read a lot of fic in my breaks.

When I got home, the phone was ringing off the hook, which was annoying as all get out, but it turned out to be a school about a scholarship I got (it was a bit embarrassing there, though, as she was like "So you're in, and you got our highest scholarship!" and I was all "Thanks! *recalls applying to your school but cannot remember where you are or if there was any particular reason why I did so*" and then the people from the car place telling me that I should have the car back by late Tuesday afternoon. Plus, turns out that the chicken that was in the fridge yesterday was saved for me, so I had a salad for dinner and that was good. Andplusagain, I'd asked Dad to get one kind of ice cream a few days back, which it turned out the store he went to didn't have, but he went out and bought me the fat-free minty ice cream sandwiches I wanted and picked up some caramel rice cakes at the same time yesterday, so yay for healthy non-health food.

I'm going to be at school for our awards breakfast tomorrow, then leaving for this health fair thing, which I'm excited about. On both counts. And then a dinner and awards thing (not actually awards for me, but they want our group of awardy-people to parade around for the younger persons so they can say "this is what you must be") on Wednesday night which is also cool.

And LOLOLZ, this teacher thing is hard. I just spent about an hour and a half typing up a 4-page test for my dad's class (because they added things and moved them around and such). I wanted to just scan in the bits that didn't need changed (as there were large blocks that did not), but I figured that it would take about the same amount of time fussing with the scanner as typing it. I was wrong. The formatting's the hard part. How much space do you leave for the answers? Stuff like that.

Speaking of the weather. Just a letter to the people who plow the roads:

Dear Road Plower People.
Did you decide that plowing the roads that lead to my house was for losers or something? Fail.
Alexandria