powered (or not, as the case would currently have it) by a battery. (X_X)

flashback to: several days ago. meredeth turns her car on and the battery and brake light both flash on. great. coz she has plenty of other ways to get to work, and she always has tons of cash on hand with which to fix even the most expensive of repairs on a 13-year-old pile of rubber and plastic already held together only by the thinnest of wire and even thinner good karma.

the truth: many many bills all happened to be due at the same time this paycheck, relieving me of all but $18.53 of my hard-earned wages, half of which i've already spent on such frivolities as groceries. i was super hoping my car would at least muddle through for another 10~12 days until my next paycheck arrives, at which point, i would have happily skipped over to the nearest trustworthy(ish) car repair establishment to have my battery replaced, my brakes checked, and my muffler put back on, thus making almost as quick work of that paycheck as my rent and student loans made of this one. apparently, however, my car had other ideas. it almost didn't start up on the way home this afternoon, so i decided not to take the highway, thank god, and instead tranversed the city on its main streets, hoping at least to make it to a suitable pulling-over spot before my car completely exploded.

flashback to: last year right around this time. meredeth attempts to drive home from florida but has A TINY SPOT OF TROUBLE...

the symptoms were the same. car engine dropping out and then deciding it didn't want to stall out after all. which, now that we mention it, it has been doing ever since then. i was stopped at one red light early on in the journey and almost didn't make it, so i knew it wasn't looking good for me and my battery. i decided that i would give up on trying to make it home and shoot instead for the auto parts store. i managed to hit all the lights down High St just right and even turned the corner onto 161 (the highway very near to which i live) without having to slow down all that much. but there was still one traffic light between me and the auto parts store, and sure as my karma was wearing out, i hit it while it was red. i didn't even make it to a full stop before my car threatened seriously to cut out, so i quick shifted into the turning lane and took off during the green arrow, thinking only to keep my car going as long as possible, knowing damn well that it wasn't gonna start up again if i turned it off.

well, i turned the corner, i turned into a mcdonald's right there, the parking lot lead out to a service road that would have taken me straight to the auto parts store, but it was just then, AS I WAS TURNING THE CORNER WITH ANOTHER CAR LOOMING LARGE IN THE ONCOMING LANE THANKS VERY MUCH, that my car decided it had had enough. the power steering cut out, the power brakes cut out, in short, the car turned straight off and staunchly refused to have anything else to do with me or my ignition key. i managed to coast myself off to a quiet berm and turn the thing off before cursing it's mother, it's mother's mother, and it's battery's mother. i could see the auto parts sign from my driver's seat. i could have walked there, if i had thought it would have done me any good.

i called my fam(ily, that is) (awesomely functional at times like this) and had my padre come to pick me up. i described my (car's) symptoms to him.

padre: that sounds like the alternator, actually.
me: oh.
padre: yeah. remember my saturn, before this one? it did the same thing. i had to have the alternator replaced.
me: oh. ... that doesn't sound cheap.
padre: no.

oh.

so we head down to the auto parts store, dude says can i help you, i describe my (car's) symptoms.

dude: that sounds more like the alternator, actually.
me: ah-hah.

long story short, new alternator = ~$80 (which i don't have) + self installation skills (which, seriously, i don't have). we left the store empty handed. we headed home, we got my mom's 1998 CR-V (a honda suv thing with amazing shelf life and a tow capacity we have been previously forced to verify) and took the long slow road back to my parents' house. my father can do some things to cars, but replacing alternators is not among them, and so we turned to other options:

option a) mom's employer's husband's son. wow that was a chain. a couple more people and we could have reached kevin bacon. in any event, this young man does mechanic work and will possibly be able to fix my car. if i'm lucky (not hitherto indicated) he'll also be willing to wait a couple weeks on payment until i get my next paycheck, thus allowing me to make my rent payment on time instead of 5 days late.

option b) mechanics garage. if option a doesn't work out, i'll be calling around tomorrow morning to see who's open and who's cheapest and then choose based probably on the former rather than the later, since i have no other way to work and definitely do not have enough time off to spend the whole of the next two weeks at home. as nice as that sounds.

so at the moment, i'm in a holding pattern until we discover whether or not the near-kevin-bacon degree of separation mentioned above will result in a repaired car and a rent payment made on time. if yes, we may be able to avoid any serious potholes in the road of Life (tm), and if not, hopefully it will manage to confine itself to one of those nasty potholes you get after the snow, and not the guatemalan kind.

~meredeth.
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flashback: this post brought to you by stage direction.

my weekend was so busy, i had to go back to work to recover from it. friday was mostly normal, exept i didn't head over to my mom's place to do the laundry. (that's right, my mom's place. because the laundrymat at my apartment complex costs $1.50 per load, that's why.) no, i took the opportunity to take it easy on friday night, because i knew it would be the only moment that weekend i got to do so. (^^;) besides, i have recently rearranged mine livingroom, so i thought it was about time i got to hang around in it.



i really only rearranged the craft section, the TV section hasn't moved. it's difficult to rearrange that area. the tv's bolted to the wall. (^_^) but as you can see, i now have a nice little L shaped craft metropolis, complete with swedish towers in the closet~ (because of their blue, white and golden colors, that's why.) i pulled The Machine (that grey monstrosity next to the Errant Chair) out of the closet, where it wasn't fitting anyway, and now i can actually use it! now i just have to invent a reason to. (^_^)

unfortunately, all this saturday-prep meant no friday-night anime, a tradition my sibs and i have recently re-establed after a too-long absence. we're working our way through Chevalier D'Eon (so far not bad, but not especially awesome) thanks to that great and wonderful god, Netflix. but this week, meredeth had to go to bed early (!?) so she could get up early (!!??) saturday morning (T_T) at the hideously and not at all good time of...

... 7.30. A.M.

seriously. so what would cause me, she who loves a late wake up time so much she once slept through an entire day (not kidding), to wake up at a time normally reserved for going to sleep (at least in my world)? one of my friends was getting ordained! ok, so what does that mean? (seriously, i've had more than one person greet me with that awkward silence that says, "i don't really know what that means...") my friend Elise was mystically turned into a priest this past saturday~ (^_^)



actually, she's been studying for a long time (a lifetime of learning!) and she was ordained as a deacon last year, so this was the big final step. unless she's thinking of being a bishop. (^_^) she'll make a great priest though, she's very thoughtful and so tactful! meredeth couldn't be that tactful if her life depended on it. (^^;) elise is the one in the dark red on the left. my mommeh made her vestments~ there were seven people ordained that day, and it was pretty cool. a whole group of us from my church went down together. the church was in West Chester, and it was so WHITE and kind of sparse. i guess that's protestantism at its purest, but we've got all the smells and bells at my church, and a fairly awesome piece of stained glass, and some really nice warm wooden exposed ceiling beams, so i tend to prefer that. a church isn't a church w/out at least one piece of super awesome stained glass. they tried to liven up the place with that square plaque thing you see above the altar, but it just wasn't the same. also in that picture, you might be able to spot (although maybe not, i had to take it with my phone) our deacon Douglas (over on the right in the red robe... oh wait. the one facing the camera and standing up. the one sitting down is bishop Briedenthal. who's name i may have just misspelled.). the blonde lady to the left of him is TJ. she was a visiting deacon at our church for a while, she's cool too~

well, after the service was a nice little brunch thing (we are episcopalians, after all, we have a tradition to uphold, people) and then my mother and i took advantage of the fact that we were in West Chester Ohio to visit the nearby (i mean like 6 blocks away) IKEA~~~

that's right, that bastion of self-assembled, inexpensive and modernist furniture and other home goods~ i'm totally addicted, and so's my mother. coincidentally, i had just been paid, so it was the perfect moment. we took along one of our fellow church-goes, who had never been and said she'd certainly never go on her own (gasp!) and we had a blast. i got a bookcase (BADLY needed) and a fancy ceiling-mounted curtain track (wherein you slide your curtain back and forth like a vertical blind instead of drawing them back like a normal curtain) and some more bamboo. because i can never have enough. it's the only plant i can't kill. (^_^)b

here's our haul:



that's my stuff and my mom's stuff together. kinda small by our normal standards, actually. (^^;) jane (our fellow church-goer)'s yellow bag of joy is on the other side of the picture (cut off~) and front and center, you will see the pepparkakors of song and story. that would be ginger snaps for the rest of you. these are thin, and flower-shaped, and totally perfect in every way. (^_^) the other thing that's perfect (although not flower-shaped and not in any way thin) at IKEA is the cake:



that thing sugar-fueled me for the 2.5 hours we spent in that place. (^^;) my feet hurt. jane fell asleep in the car for a little bit on the way back. (it's about 1.5 hours back to columbus.) but it was super fun! and then i got to go home and put my stuff together~

see, some people would use this space to gripe and complain about trying to assemble furniture. now, i don't know if these people are stupid, but i don't find IKEA furniture, or indeed furniture of any kind, even the crazy wall-mounted TV thing i have with multiple shelves and a track and a sliding door, to be particularly difficult to assemble. also, i enjoy using screwdrivers and mallets and wall-mounting pieces of plastic, so that may have something to do with it. (^_^) in any event, here's my bookcase(s):



the one on the left, the tall one? that's the bookcase i bought from IKEA, called BESTA, and it contains books that i have already read. the one on the right, the short one that's full to overflowing? yeah. that's the bookcase i've had for about 15 years now and it "contains" all the books i have not yet read. i repeat: yeah.

i couldn't get a good shot of the curtain thing, coz the light in my little nook is messy, but it was these: kvartal. we bought some clips that slide into the track and clipped my blackout curtain to it. now i can sleep till appropriate hours of the day. very cool~

then, i had to plan out sunday's trek, because sunday was ... MIDSOMAR~

here's the story: a few years back my father got laid off right at thanksgiving. it was like, here's your thanksgiving vacation, don't bother coming back. thanks. (X_X) so, not surprisingly, we had a pretty rotten christmas. mom and dad were like, well that sucked. we need another one. so my dad was like, christmas in july could be more than just a phrase? and my mom was like how about midsummer, like our swedish relations? so it was decided! we had a second christmas, in june, and we called it midsomar, and we had a nice bbq out in the back yard and a nice dip in the pool and some gift exchanges and some movie watching and some family board games (which we super love at my house). it was awesome. the next christmas, we had an acceptable, some might even say good, christmas, but then that next june, we kind of all looked at each other like, how about another midsomar? (^_^) so we did~ and now it's a tradition thing, we get two christmases in my house, in rememberance of one christmas that really bit. we like to thumb our nose at fate whenever possible. (^_^)b this year, it seemed to sneak up on us, but we still managed to come through with a pretty good sized display:



yeah, not shabby. (^_^) i crocheted my brother a dalek, which he seemed to enjoy. he put it on his head anyway:



i got a sake set:



haven't used it yet, but not for want of trying. (^_^)

everybody got some cool stuff, actually, it was a terribly festive occasion. (^_^)

the aftermath:



we usually have a pool party, but it's been raining here in columbus a TON (a ton) lately, and so the water was too chilly to get in. that didn't stop my little sister, but it did stop the rest of us, thank you very much. and it was a little too late to get over to my apartment and hop in that pool (which i finally got to do the week before, finally) which is very cool, but closes at 9 pm:



so instead, we took our new stuff inside and set about using it! actually, meredeth did her laundry mostly, but michael organized his new spices and spice jars. he's a super cook, and he does pretty much every night's meal now at that house, i hear. (^_^) so mom got him some lemon salt, some parsley and some dill (which i can't find a link to) she saw at IKEA and some nice large spice jars with screw on lids and the ability to sit at an angle as well as straight up. (coz... um, it looks cool, i guess, that's why.) so we were all standing around remarking upon how good the stuff smelled. the lemon salt was neon yellow, but smelled awesome! we were like, i thought the package color was an advertising exageration, but no. the salt actually is that color. the parsley was good, you know, parsley-ish. and then michael busted out the dill. and we were like, WOW! that's some strong stuff. good, but strong. everybody wandered in and out of the kitchen, attracted by the smell. we were like, "smell, but not deeply." unfortunately, dana-chan was the only one of us to have the right idea. she wafted, the rest of us sniffed. i myself sniffed, and i paid a heavy price. i don't know if i'm allergic to it, or if the fineness of the powder just destroyed my nostrils, but i swear i sniffled and sneezed and used up literally half of a box of tissues over the next three hours. i could. not. stop. sneezing. it was CRAZY! we watched our friday night anime on sunday night, and by the time the allotted two hours had passed, i was surrounded by a white drift of used tissues. it was just as disgusting as you think it was, and the worst part was that it wouldn't stop! i went home, i washed my face and hands, and i changed my clothes, and my nose was still running. i blew my nose so much that the inside of my nose hurt. when i woke up monday morning, my eyes were puffy and watery and oozing this kind of yellowy nastiness (i know, way tmi) and i was STILL SNEEZING! i was like, should i make a doctor's appointment? jesus! thankfully, it let up over the day, but really, my nose still kind of hurts. i'm staying the hell away from that stuff from now on! (X_X)

monday, after work, i decided to reward myself with a little swim. dana-chan (using her fancy new phone, a nokia nuron that is, i have to admit, moderately cool) had been texting me and i asked after the pool, which was confirmed to be slightly chilly, but much better than sunday night (thank you, 90 degree temps...) so i did the tiny bit of grocery shopping i hadn't been able to do during the weekend and headed over:



because dana is constitutionally incapable of being photographed w/out Striking a Pose, that's why. (^_^) we had a great time, as we clones usually do when we gather together. (^_^)

in other news, i finished a needlepoint QR code for one of my (other) sister's friend today. carolyn's always good for some pimpage, and this time it paid off, in the form of one @stylesmith, whose goodie shall be shipped off on the morrow~

also, hopefully, there will soon(ish) be some acceptable fictions available for your reading perusal here. i bought a couple of highly recommended books on editing from amazon (which came a full two days early! srsly!) and i fully intend to put them to use. i'm going to start with something smaller, with the intention of not overwhelming myself straight away, and then i'm on to past NaNoNovels~

so, i shall head back to that, and in closing, i shall give you a picture of the clouds above my place of employment about a week ago. this is what we have to deal with around here. ENOUGH RAIN ALREADY!



~meredeth.
-who does not own even a single umbrella.

or more correctly, a procrastination story. (^^;) i have signed myself up for The Fiction Project, which, if you haven't heard about it, is a delightful little thing over at the art house co-op where they send you a moleskine, you fill it up with, in this case, Fiction, and then you send it back. by May 23.

yeah.

well, at least i'm finished with the first draft. now to revise it, edit it, and copy it, by hand, into the little moleskine they sent me, and all monday evening, so that tuesday i can send it back to them priority, so they're sure to have it by june 5.

here's what i've got so far:



yeah.

i've got a couple of art house projects going on actually. my favorite one so far is the free postcard art thing i did on a whim a couple of weeks back (yes, it's been that long since i did a blog post!). the assignment was to make a 4x6 inch piece of art on the theme Dreams, and then mail it to them. here's mine:



(for a picture with the [outlandish] description, check the submission page. it's worth it, trust me.)

you can check out all my art house co-op projects over here, actually, and then you may even want to venture out into the rest of the site. if you have even thought about sketching, and especially if you're one of those sketch-addicted people, your wallet may want to just hide in the corner now. (^_^)

and just when it was the worst possible time to distract me, i found out that i won 1600 xbox points in this history channel contest. i was like, awesome! now i'll never finish this story! (^^;)

actually, i haven't done too badly with it so far. i bought Braid (of course) and downloaded about every trial game in the entire indie games section. (^^;) the other game i've actually purchased was called Next Wars, or something. it's a tower defense thing, only built like a little LED display or something. it would be so perfect on my phone, or my DS, or some kind of little hand-held thing, that i can hardly stand it. it is pretty awesome. i was surprised by how much i liked it, i don't usually go for those kinds of games, but this one i can totally see myself getting addicted to. it's like magnetica, but instead of clearing marbles by making threesomes, you clear bad guys by blowing them up with lasers. i know! lasers!

...

i also bought myself the most awesome scanner about two weeks ago. an epson ... um ... perfection v300 photo. that's what it says on the side. (^_^) it's got a little slide and negative scanner attachment (which is awesome) and if i was willing to wait overnight for a scan, i could do it at 4800 dpi. i don't know what you could possibly need that for, maybe you need to study the strange bug you just killed in your bathroom and you haven't got your electron microscope handy. at any rate, i'll be putting my new baby to good use here before the end of the month, as i will be adding ACEOs to my etsy shop later this week.

on a related note, does anyone else hate the picasa software as much as i do? i've been so busy running around buying groceries and scanners and yarn (oh my GOD the YARN) that i have completely neglected to purchase my long sought-after media pc, and it's starting to really become a problem. all my ubuntu installation (actually, easy peasy installation) has on it is picasa, and that turns out to be about the worst possible software that man has ever designed. i long for photoshop. and please do not give me your "GIMP FTW" posts. a) i've tried gimp, i wasn't terribly swayed one way or the next. b) my screen is 1280 by 600 pixels, i don't think anything (even photoshop, sadly) will do much for that. also, c) whatever's up w/ easy peasy 1.5 means that the thing throws me an error every time i try to install gimp. i guess i should just upgrade at this point, they just came out with 1.6 a couple weeks ago, but i'm far too lazy to back everything up and rewrite the whole thing. why, seriously, why, can't they just build an upgrade that's actually an upgrade and not an entire new edition. i will not completely wipe my computer and start over every time you feel like changing the chrome and sticking tom notes or whatever the hell it's called back on my system, despite the fact that i remove it every time. seriously.



and now my sister's coming over, so i guess i won't be doing any story revision at this moment, either.

(^^;)

as in, between me and my apartment. (^_^) every time i talk about it, it makes me smile. and trust me, i find a way to insert it into every /single/ conversation i have. eventually, everything is about this lovely home. (^_^)

speaking of... (^^;) the girls and i (that would be my mother and two sisters, aka (from now on, at least) The Girls) went on a thrift shop expedition this past saturday, during which i picked up a few lovely items for the home. (^_^) i found a scanner, complete w/ negative and slide functionality, which i snatched up. it was missing the power cord, thanks to the thrift store's pointlessly annoying habit of seperating power adaptors from items when they arrive. i couldn't find it in the Bin of Endless Power Adaptors, though, so either someone already bought it, or it didn't come in with one. in any event, finding one on ebay for super cheap was simply a matter of using the search feature, so i've purchased one of those already, and it should be here as soon as the dude gets around to shipping it. :P

i also found some of those icey mugs, the one that you freeze upside down in the freezer, and then they keep your drink cold while you drink it. perfect for smoothie-saving, by the way. since it's apparently difficult for me to make only one serving of something... (>_<)

i also found four rather nice burgandy silk pillows for super cheap. they go quite nicely in my burgandy living room (on my super black couch~) thank you very much.

what i also found, and here's the cool part, for those of you in the know, is a :cuecat. (^_^) for those of you not in the know, it's a little barcode scanner that looks like a cat. ... yes. i know. but here's why i want one: librarything. and of course, other such inventory-ing things. so i spent much of sunday scanning barcodes and giggling when my library topped out at 335 books. when i get my power cord, i may even be able to scan in some covers for those naked books on my list. (!) also, having actually witnessed the sheer bookage in this house converted into arabic numerals, i am more convinced than ever that i need to find bookcases. and soon.
.

so here i am on your regular old friday night, hanging out and eating pizza and UNPAAACKING~~~

that's right, i'm all moved in, and enjoying the wonder and joy of not having anyone pounce on me the instant i walk in the door. "how are you~" "exhausted." "how was your day~" "i just got home from it, can i relax a minute before i have to talk about it again?" (^^;) these days when i walk in the door, there is a blessed silence. (^_^) i can take my shoes off, visit the restroom, maybe get dinner going, and THEN turn on the skype and the gtalk and the whatever else. i'm in love. (^_^)

! except for the dude who just walked past my balcony talking all loud on his cell phone who just scared the crap out of me. (^^;) also, my insistence on good lighting means that my electric bill will not be cheap (^^;) BUT! i don't care! because it's MY electric bill, and if i really cared that much, i'd turn a light off. i'm the only one responsible, after all. (^_^)

in other news, my control freak side comes to the fore with ever more delighted and craven grins. i'm still unpacking, and the sheer chaos of that process is driving me up a (gorgeously painted) wall, but i don't really have any time off to spare, so i have to unpack when i get home from work, which generally means a box, maybe two, and then i'm too tired to do much of anything but veg in front of a PBS documentary or something. (^_^) i'm not paying for cable, so it's netflix and the local channels for me. not like i (have time to) watch anything else anyway. at the moment, you can almost see the entire TV area floor. i have just one large living/dining area, but actually it's a TV area and a studio for me, with a gingantic tumbled mess of cords under the TV. unlike my studio area, at the moment, which is a tumbled mess of boxes and crap on two desks that i have yet to really commit to liking the position of. ^^;;; not that i have anything due imminently. no. not at all. ^^;;;;;;

tonight has been spent mostly attempting to find a one pound skein of dark brown yarn and ~25 granny squares i've crocheted from it that i seem to have LOST during the move. yeah. figure that one out, i dare you. i've looked pretty much everywhere in my house, and i've had my siblings checking every nook and cranny at that house, but so far, it's magically disappeared. i guess my next solution is gonna be looking in the cars that we used that day. maybe it got left behind or something. the only other option is to buy a whole new skein, and that seems silly.

ok, the other thing i've discovered here is that i own far too many lamps. there is literally no where else to put a lamp. there is a lamp, i swear, every six feet in the apartment. it's like, LampLand.

oh yeah, i also have no scanner. huh. i guess that's alright, since i also have no media pc (T_T) but after a minute, that's really going to get obnoxious.

ok, i really do have to clean this desk off. i swear. UP A WALL.

(this post brought to you by disorganized clutter, and my intense hatred for the same.)
.

as my local etsy bookbinding list has just reminded me, the UK has declared today World Book Day~ great idea, the UK! (^_^) why today? well, it turns out that the rest of us celebrate world book day on april 23, which also happens to be cervantes's birthday. but in angelond, that part of the calendar is usually already packed up with crazy anglican things like the resurrection of the lord or some such thing (^_^) so they decided to move the day of the book back a little, to march. which is okay, coz lent's usually a little dry anyway, so we could use an extra reason to celebrate during the month of march, and an entire day being set aside for glorification of my personal favorite art form is just fine by me~

it is also, by some strange cosmic alignment of timetables and paychecks and possibly alien stars, the day before i sign my rental agreement! (exactly~) just the thought of myself, at home, by myself, maybe /maybe/ some music on, probably just sprawl myself out on the carpet and go spread eagle just laying there with the secure knowledge that no one will come up and try to trip over me, or be fake cute by jumping on me, or pretending to throw a cat on me. in fact! there will not be any cats anywhere within a cinderblock wall of my apartment. jesus that makes me happy.

so to celebrate (and also because moving that many books will break my back) i am having a sale over at notuboc~ and it's a serious sale, too, as in, "buy one get one" serious. of course, you have to pay for the more expensive one and you get the cheaper one free, and you will be paying shipping on both items, but from now until march 14, if you buy one book, you can choose another for free. just check out with them both in your cart, and wait for an invoice from me through paypal. i'm joined to my internet-enabled phone at the hip, so you shouldn't have to wait long~

now, go read a book! (^_^)
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actually, it wouldn't be so bad if i could stop coughing. it's that cough where, once you start, you can't stop. so i just don't allow myself to start. yesterday, i couldn't swallow, day before that, i could hardly breathe, so i don't know if you want to consider today an improvement, but at least i made it to work today. my poor nose is so red and swollen from constant blowing. on a related note, the wikipedia article on noses really sucks. i need anatomical charts, people, not giant pictures of dog snouts.

in other news, the rest of my life seems to be going not hideously for the moment. i don't wanna brag, just in case, you know, but all in all, i might even be inclined to use the word "nicely" to describe the current trajectory of my life. (^_^) i'm signing papers for a shiny new apartment on friday (zomg, the day after tomorrow!) and this weekend begins the Great Paint-a-thon (actually only about a room and a half, but we've only got a day and a half in which to do it) and then a week of moving boxes over, one tiny car-load at a time, after hours (since i /really/ can't spare any more time now) and then on the 12er (only 9 days from now??? what!!!???) I'LL MOVE IN!!!

ohmigawd i'm so excited just thinking about it~

i'm not gonna have everything i'd wanted, but i've got (almost) everything i need, so i'll just have to get over it. the only "necessity" i'm missing is a vaccuum cleaner, but i can borrow my mom's that first weekend and then i'll buy one in a month or so. i don't have the car payment that i thought i would have by now, so i'll have a bit of extra cashes with which to vaccuum my shiny new abode. also on the docket is purchasing (or perhaps building, if i can find an excuse to splurge) a media pc. i have a pre-built model already picked out, which isn't fancy to the point of hysteria, but which would serve perfectly well w/ the addition of a frilly graphics card. i also have the components for a notuboc-built model, so to speak, weighing down my newegg shopping cart. (^^;) the pc that would result in a moderately fancy gaming pc, provided i can live w/ putting windows on it. otherwise, i shall end up with a massively overpowered ubuntu box that could play games provided any good ones could run on wine.

... okay, well, upon browsing through the wine app database and i see that things have improved, but i also see that media money is still unusably slow, and that lightroom suffers from the same problems. really, these are the only two barriers for a windows-free me-- oh wait, let me check out steam + audiosurf... hm. a mixed bag it seems. well, guess i can't yet go totally windows-free, but i have hope~ frankly, it's not like i do a crapload of pc gaming. i'm mostly a console girl in that respect. actually, i'm mostly a handheld girl in that respect, although i have been all about the headshots lately (read: borderlands ftw, hands down).

i suppose in the end, i'll probably just deal without a proper dvd player for a minute, while i save up for the notuboc-built version. (^_^) i've got an xbox and a netflix subscription in the meanwhile, so i can deal. for a little while. i guess.

(^_^)
.

that's right, i'm maaad!

actually, i'm terribly happy~ (^_^) i have an appointment on tuesday morning (or wednesday, if i can switch it) to pick out... MY BRAND NEW APARTMENT!!!11!! (^_^) so a march 5th move-in date might not be shockingly out of the question after all. March Madness is ON! i was (and still am, honestly) a little concerned that finances won't come together, but i think overall, everything's going well, and i'm psyched up about my chances for a medal on the 5th...

oh wait, sorry. too much olympics. (^_^)

in fact, i'm such an olympics junkie that i rifled through my parents' bills last night so i could find their cable tv account number so i could sign in to watch the'lympics online. and this, just for curling. (women's, UK v JAP, by the way JAP taught some UK girls how it's done~) ... actually, it seems curling and hockey is about all that's on the online things at the moment. huh. what i'd really like is for all olympic coverage to be online. although after i move out, since i won't be paying for cable, i therefore won't be able to watch online next time. dummies. stoopic nbc. seriously, having to log on to watch olympic coverage? i guess olympic spirit does not involve encouraging others in their desire to support our team by watching them, only by paying to watch them. i guess i'll still have the regular network channel to watch, but that's only the most popular stuff. figure skating is nice, especially the ice dancing non-compulsory stuff, and i'll watch snowboarding anything, but in the summer olympics, they put the cool stuff like judo and fencing online, and i won't be able to see that stuff in 2 years. (T_T)

in other shocking news, i went to the paper store today. ^^; what's truly shocking here is that i bought some paper with a specific plan, and then came straight home and cut out the text block for those planned books. i know. crazy talk.

actually, i didn't do it straight away. i came home and filled up my (superflat and still out of alignment) tire, and then went back out and got my hairs cut!

before:



and then after:



actually in that shot, i look kind of like the new doctor, but i swear it's not like that in person. (^_^) there is one little piece of hair that's not quite long enough to go properly behind my ear, and so keeps getting right in my face, but give me a week, i'm sure it'll be fine. my hair grows like a pubescent red-headed stepchild. (^_^)

anyhow, back to bookbinding for me~

this post brought to you, actually, by my love of fact-verification. (^_^)
.

i shall now proceed to sit in front of the television for the next 16 days. well, less than that now, since this is day three or something, but yeah. don't expect too much activity from this particular sphere until march. (^_^)

not that i don't have things to do... (T_T) in fact, what i've been spending an inordinate amount of time doing lately, is playing video games. i bought an xbox (+borderlands, +trusty bell, er, i mean, eternal sonata) and The Internet Boyfriend and i have been heavy into the borderlands. not that i don't like video games, i guess, but i've done more gaming in the past week than i have probably in the entire three~six months before that. of course, any game where you can run people (and puppies) over w/ a rocket-launching 4-wheeler can't be considered a waste of time (^^;) i'm just saying that some other things are getting neglected, that's all. (^^;)

for instance, i'm pretty sure i'm three entries behind on my YOUkun journal. i swear, guys, i'm not dead. i'm playing borderlands. (^_^)

also neglected of late is my poor etsy shop. of course, listing is the part that i'm laziest about, no matter what, so i can't blame that entirely on borderland (^^;) but i'd like to anyway! (^_^) but, i finally got over my laziness this afternoon AND LISTED SOMETHING! ginko bocloba, i call it~ :D

in other news, i've been working on BUNNEH:



this is BUNNEH mark III. my mom gave me BUNNEH mark I for christmas when i was little, and every time i wear her out, i just make a new one. (^_^) her name is katie, but this one is still BUNNEH until she's done and i trade the old katie out for the new. poor girl suffered a clavicle fracture in the wash last time. (^^;) she's just so old, the muslin ripped her head nearly clean off. i was like OH NOES!

actually, it's not horrible timing, since i'll be moving into my own place before too much longer. this way, it's like a complete start over.

i haven't even officially put in the application yet and i'm like, let's move!

we went to ikea the other weekend (despite the snOMG here in the midwest~) where i filled up on furniture (^_^) (got my brother a new bed for his birthday, got myself the most awesome wall mounted tv stand/dvd collection holder, and also got myself a new dresser) and then we went to old time pottery, where i got most of what i need for kitchen. the only things i need are a media pc (already picked out, just have to save up for it), a microwave, a toaster, and a vaccuum. the media pc i suppose i could technically live w/out for a while, but for preference, it's actually a higher priority than any of the other things. (^^;)

except a fire extinguisher. (^^;)


.

no, not the basketball kind. the moving out in the month of march kind.

that's right! meredeth is moving out! finally kissing goodbye and goodspeed to the parents' basement rooms and hola hello and aloha to my own apartment!

could i be a little excited? maybe?

anyway, i went out this past weekend to buy towels, coz i felt domestic. actually, coz i got a gift card from kmart for graduation, from a delightful mother/son team who knew exactly what i would use it for, and guestimated, nearly to the dollar, how much i would need to accomplish my task. (^_^) thus we arrive at the following:



the first official box of moving! this currently contains towels, some nifty green and taupe striped ones, the ones i bought. i still have to fill it up w/ other bath things, like soap dishes:



and bath mats:



and shower curtains:



as soon as i get my dollars back from the federal and state governments, we're going on a weekend trip to Ikea to pick me up some furniture. after much (and i do mean /much/) debate, i have decided upon the following:

a klippan loveseat (coz a full-on probably won't fit):



a malm dresser (or two):



and maybe a chair (if i think it'll fit in my apartment, which isn't looking good at this point):



i haven't decided on a color scheme for my living room yet (i'm vascillating between blue, green and grey) so if i haven't decided on one by the time ikea comes along, i'll just buy white covers and dye them or something.

well, i'm sure i'll have more on the apartment search later, but for now, i shall leave you w/ the website of the apartment complex that tops my list: the reserve at sharon woods. mine would be The Forest.

~meredeth.
-can't wait!
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ok, did the month of january simply disappear into the ether? i'm seriously like, where did it go? i remember new year, i remember that. dick clark, the ball glowing, i remember that. on skype w/ teh internets bf all night (^_^) i remember that, but then suddenly it was the 24th, and i'm wondering what, precisely, happened to the two weeks in the middle?

i haven't listed much on my etsy shop, coz i haven't been in the linux half of my computer of my computer (where the database for my shop items is) in about two weeks, coz my skype doesn't really work on ubuntu, or at least, it doesn't want too work w/ my FANCY NEW BLUETOOTH HEADSET! i got a motorola h385 (which you can see here at amazon) and it turns out to work perfectly w/ both my t-mobile g1 and windows xp/skype! (^_^) times infinity! coz previously, i was like, cord-welded to my laptop whenever i wanted to talk to anybody on skype. my netbook's mic is fine, but the speaker's "quality" meant that i had to put on my headphones if i wanted to hear anybody. then we discovered that an external microphone vastly increases sound quality (yeah, shockers, i know) so then i had even more cords and accessories snaking out of the sides of my little netbook. it looked like Lain or something. so i decided that enough was enough! i went to staples and looked at their bluetooth headsets.

i completely failed to find anything i liked. most of them reminded me of the stuff i have to wear all day at work, so that was a moral fail, i guess. then i saw a dude at gamestop with a fancy bluetooth headset, and i was like, hey!

of course, when i got to target and found that same headset, i found right above it a $70 price tag, so that idea was quickly shot down. (^^;) but this utilitarian motorola thing on the shelf just below the fancy one, and after a quick internet search assured me that it didn't suck horribly, i took the plunge. and now here i am, talking to someone (teh internet bf, point of fact) WIRELESSLY! i know the rest of you may have discovered this about 500 years ago, but i, meredeth, your humble blog narrator, have just discovered the wonder that is a functional bluetooth headset.

the other thing i did this afternoon is make my first official NEW APARTMENT PURCHASE! that's right, i WILL be moving out this spring! i've already looked at one apartment (the reserve at sharon woods) which looks more and more to be our winner, but i do have two others i'd like to at least look at before i make my decision firm. but i figure there are some things i'm going to need no matter where i end up, so i've gotten together a list of things i'll need to have on hand before i move in, and this list includes such things as towels, and so i went out and bought some this afternoon. i got a $25 gift card for KMart for graduation this past december, and as soon as i saw it, i was like, "housewares!" (^_^) so i bought some nice fuzzy towels and some handtowels and some wash cloths, and all for what amounted to $3.94 out of my pocket! (^_^) they have dark green, light green, and sort of taupe stripes of different sizes, and they'll look perfect in whichever apartment bathroom i end up in. i didn't get a shower curtain, but i saw many many cool ones, so i just have to decide on one. of course, with my mother being a tailor/seamstress/etc, i can always have her make me one out of whatever i want, so the options are literally endless. which is probably why i can't make a decision. (^^;)

ok, i'm sure i had other things to write here, but since roku-san is cracking me up so much, i really can't concentrate, so i guess we're gonna have to end it here. perhaps i'll be more sensible at a later date.

...

but i doubt it.
.

if you've been looking for a way to enter japanese text on your android phone, the market's got a couple of options for you. i go with Simeji, which i guess, since cyrket's been down for a while and hasn't shown any signs of mystically reappearing, you can find over at androlib, but the manual seems to only be in japanese. now, assuming that you know enough to enter japanese text into your /cell phone/ you could probably translate it yourself, but since i like to translate stuff anyway, and i have far too much down time at work, i did it for you! yay! you'll have to download the app yourself to get the pictures, but i've got you covered on text. if you have any questions about the translation, please leave them in the comments. thanks~

Simeji version 3.B.1

* Attention

If Simeji continually force closes, please uninstall Simeji and reinstall it. If there is no improvement, the developer would appreciate your contacting him at (note: whatever email he puts there. i'm not going to put it here in case he changes it, and also to attempt to prevent spam).

* Things to do Before You use Simeji

* How to Register Simeji as an IME

Open System Settings -> Locale & Text. (note: these are the American G1 settings, i don't know if they're different for other English settings, or different phones)

[screencap]

In this screen, select Simeji under Text Settings.

[screencap]

Simeji now becomes available as an IME. In the next section, we will switch the IME to Simeji.

* How to Switch Your IME to Simeji

Open an application, such as the browser, and tap and hold any text area.

[screencap]

For example tap and hold the text area.

[text box] (note: this IME works for things other than strictly "text boxes," such as notepad apps etc)

A dialogue box will appear, where you can switch input methods. (note: you may have to select "Input Methods" from a box that pops up when you tap and hold, and then you'll get a list of available IMEs.)

[screencap]

Please select Simeji from the list of available IMEs that is displayed.

[screencap]

Simeji is now registered as an IME. When you tap on a text area, Simeji's software keyboard appears, and you can input Japanese.

* About the Hardware Keyboard

With the hardware keyboard, you can access Simeji's functions with the associated keys, listed below:

shortcut --- function

shift + space --- switch input (note: this switches from english character to japanese character input)

shift + enter --- mushroom

shift + 7 (search) --- convert to katakana

shift + menu --- settings

* About Simeji's settings

When you tap and hold the [文字] (note: /moji/ or "character") key at the bottom left of the Simeji software keyboard, you can open Simeji's settings.

* Powered by

SocialIME (WebAPI)
OpenWnn (licensed under Apache 2.0 by OMRON SOFTWARE CO., LTD)

(^_^) there is only one of you who will get that (well, maybe two or three) and you know who you are. (^_^)

also in the "hypothetical" category at the moment is a new website design. i've got the images all set to go, and i've been changing a few of my pages around, (as anyone who's tried to click the contact link above has already discovered. i promise, i'll take care of that soon.) but i haven't got anything coded yet. i was going to do it this weekend, but then i (apparently) decided that being out of school means taking on eight hundred projects, so i spent the weekend adding another one to the list that i outlined last time. (^^;)

on the other hand, i did take pictures of, edited pictures for, and data entried in prep for listing of some 19 or 20 books. the shocking part is actually the photographing of. i hate taking pictures of my books. it's kind of lame, and the pictures never come out as good as i'd like them to, despite my having read basically every tutorial on the internet. i guess the pictures aren't hideous, but still. what i'd really like to do is go around and just have people fondle my books. everyone who holds one is like, "wow, nice!" so i feel like, if i could just get people to put their grubby mits on my books, and then convince them that books are just really cool things, just like iPods or tvs, but more user-friendly, then everybody'd want one!

so, yeah. i'll get right on that. (^^;)

actually, i do have a few teaser shots for those of you who are interested in what i've been spending my day photographing:



this is one that's i've had most of done for a long while. i was waiting till i could find some crystals or rhinestones or something to put in the fish's tail and crown. i ended up having to order some fancy shmancy swarovsky rhinestones online. when they got here, they were so small (1.9 mm small!) that i had to bust out the tweezers just to put them in place. i've still got one of these fishes left in my Box of Fancy Things, so i may do something similar in the future, but for now, this one's cool enough. (^_^)



this is one that i did while i was in florida! i bought the paper a rather long time ago, and i always knew exactly what i would do with it, but this really turned out great. the paper is kind of sparkly and shiny, and the way that the spine fits so perfectly in the trip from white to black! ah! faint~

yeah.

actually, there are a couple of books that i'm even more enamoured of.



the one on the left appeared mysteriously out of the wild blue yonder one day. it's super hefty, too. 300 pages of hefty! the black bookcloth on the spine was the very last of that i had, so i guess if i want to make any more of these (for instance, for my personal use~) i'll have to go buy some more. alas, woe is... um. yeah.

the one on the right is one that i've also had the paper for kicking around for a long while. i found the wheat paper at my local fancy paper store randomly one afternoon, and i had 100% no idea what i was going to do with it. (^_^) but after i made another book in this same binding style yesterday (it's called belgian eyelet binding, despite the absence of eyelets in the versions i make) i knew what i had to do! i kind of don't want to list this one, either. it's more practical for me than the giant yellow one, i guess, but it doesn't match my favorite car!
.

well well well, we've all made it to 2010, have we?

or at least, most of us have. the (great?) MJ and the (actually great) peter jennings notwithstanding, most of us seem to have woken up ready for the aughts to end and the teens to begin. (^_^) my new year brought with it the validity of my vendor's license and the joy of tax-exempt sales!



i taped it up to my wall right above my bookbinding goods. so i can feel special, that's why! apparently it worked, since i've made two books so far today. i went to the store and made my first tax-exempt sale, so i felt all kinds of special. (^_^)

the new year brought my brother a bit of fancy as well.



that, my friends, is one of those fancy YUDU machines. now, i've heard that a few hardcore screen printers are getting their panties all in a bunch because it doesn't require a super committment to utilize, brings their tidy little craft to the masses, etc whatever. just the way i feel about that silly letterpress gadget. and just like that silly letterpress machine, i think The Masses will find that it does not bring mass production of fine quality goods into their kitchens or living rooms or whatever. the letterpress thing has plates that crack, a relatively small press area, and does indeed take a bit of practice on in order to pull good prints off of. same with the YUDU. in fact, michael and i are still on a learning curve with the whole emulsion process. (^^;) it /is/ fun, though. our first several attempts super failed, but after narrowing down the problem to a screen that wasn't totally dry and a faucet that does not generate cool water (the water it /does/ generate is so hot it was melting the emulsion right off the screen) we seem to have gotten a general hold on things. (^_^)

in other news, i realized the other day that it had only been two weeks since my graduation ceremony. i believe i may have mentioned this? well yesterday i got to make it official. i was filling out a survey for the army of women thing (a breast cancer research thing, for those unacquainted among us) and there was a question asking what my highest level of completed schooling was:



I GOT TO CLICK THE COLLEGE GRADUATE BUTTON!!! OH yeah! (^_^) i was so happy, i took the above screenshot. there was a trending topic on twitter (ttttttt) for new years about what we were all doing #10yearsago, and i realized that exactly 10 years ago, i had just finished my very first quarter of college. this year, i have just finished my very last quarter of college. that? makes me damn happy. (^_^) every time i think about this stuff, i grin like an idiot. (^_^) if i put one more smiley emoticon in this post, it may explode. (^_^)

huh. guess not. (^_^)

the other thing i'm doing with my time this year is writing. i mean, a lot. over on dA, i've joined the #LITplease group, and they're running a tri-part contest to celebrate their opening, so i definitely have to enter that (theme: HELP WANTED). then i heard about this rockin' fiction forum called the rookery and i thought, with a name like that it's gotta be awesome! so i joined that, and now i'm about to fall off the cliff into their january challenge (theme: uh, actually no theme, but we've been paired up for a collaborative experience). and then i caught wind of this thing called the Art House Co-op. they're running... well, actually, they've got a bunch of projects all going on at once, but the one i've signed up for is the Fiction Project, where they send you a moleskine cahier, you fill it up with Story, and then you send it back to them. the subsequent collection gets put on the shelves at the brooklyn art library, as well as a gallery hop or two. i was like, yes please! so i signed up for that, too. so, that's two (hopefully short) stories due before the end of this month, and one that's due not too long after that. yikes! ... okay, seriously, when i write it out like that, it's kind of scary! good thing one of those This Month stories is with somebody else.

in fact, i've got to go reply to that Somebody Else's forum PM! the post where they paired us up was... um, slightly odd? so i'm hopeful. this is gonna be awesome!



~meredeth.
-is contemplating a new website design.
.

from christmas, mostly, but i would like to recommend, for those of you contemplating a purchase of wii sports resort, that you consult your physician before undertaking any exercise regime. (^^;) seriously. my wrist hurts, my knee hurts, my elbow is only now on the mend. all this, thanks to Swordplay. also, please allow me to recommend the little plastic remote jacket to you. is it silly looking? yes. does it kind of feel gross? definitely. will it prevent injuries sustained after gripping the thing waaay too tightly during the kendo/swordplay you vs the horde mode? i certainly hope so.

in other news, i'm writing thank you notes from graduation today. i get to bust out my happy (nominally vintage) esterbrook fountain pen to write them with. and my fancy japanese paper. (^_^) i realized yesterday that's it was two weeks exactly since the ceremony. two weeks! only two weeks! feels like two months, or two years. the other day, my sister's computer broke down, and after we (sort of) fixed it, she was like, "at least it was fixed before january 4th." i was like, "why? what happens on the 4th?" she gave me this look like, duh~ "class starts on january 4th." I HAD NO IDEA! i instantly degraded into a Stupid Grin. (^_^)

since graduation, i've been... well, mostly, i've been preoccupied with christmas. we here at the beckett household were pretty darn broke this year, thanks in part to 1x dead furnace and 1x dead job (T_T) but we still managed to have a nice holiday. (^_^) i bought the wii a present, the above-mentioned injury-inducing sport sim, and so we all proceeded to injure yourselves. (^_^) and then we went to the movies, as my clan is wont to do on christmas day. we saw sherlock holmes! it was... meh, it was okay. in a way, it was really good. jude law makes a fine dr watson, and there were some little homages to the novels/short stories that i liked. and of course there was the big reveal at the end, where holmes got to tell us how he did it, which was fun, as usual. the problem was, the makers felt they had to change the style to attract those modern, short attention span audiences. they turned holmes into an action flick. or at least a half action flick. not that holmes was by any means a pacifist. he was, after all, constantly telling watson to bring his revolver. and plenty of holmes-ian villians use the fear of the masses and play on the emotions of their victims (w/out giving away the whole movie...). i guess it's mostly that i'm so used to the jeremy brett holmes that the robert downey jr holmes felt a little wtf to me. (^^;)

actually, like many people, my biggest problem with the movie had nothing to do w/ holmes, watson, nor even the action-ing up of the entire holmes world. i, like a growing number of people who have seen and reviewed this film, feel an intense dislike for what they have done to the venerable irene adler. even ignoring the fact that in all 56 short stories and 4 holmes novels, irene is the only woman holmes shows even the slightest interest in, and then only because she's the one who manages to outwit him, even ignoring the fake/half-assed romantic subplot that the movie writers tried to shoe-horn in to a freakin' HOLMES movie, adler's character simply isn't internally consistet w/in the movie's own stated world. she's introduced, and rightly so, as the woman who outsmarted holmes. she then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie being outclassed by holmes in nearly every way. there's even a damsel in distress scene in which holmes has to rescue her from a meat chopping table saw, complete with valves and flames and handcuffs. i mean seriously. a) the real irene adler would never allow herself to be put in such a situation, b) the real holmes would never allow HIMself to be put in such a situation, and c) if the movie adler is supposed to be so damn clever, how'd SHE get in such a situation?

in short, if you loved jeremy brett's holmes and would slap your own mother for some more, this movie is not for you. if you ignore "irene adler" altogether and keep in mind that this is the era of movie making that has produced not one, but TWO "live action" alvin and the chipmunks movies, you should manage to enjoy yourself.

in still other news, i'm applying for my vendor's license as i type, so eventually, i swear, there will be some new stuff in the shop. i used some of my graduation money to get some organizational things for the shop, as i mentioned earlier, so at least the studio looks good. and i do have 50+ books that i have made that i have yet to even photograph, let alone list, a fact which causes me much shame. especially when you consider that i've spent at least $150 dollars at the local paper store just in the past 6 weeks. how do i know? the paper store has a free offer thing where you get 50 free shutterfly prints for every $50 you spend there, and i just received my third one. yup, i'm addicted. (^_^)
.

yesterday was the great pocky party, held in celebration of all things thin, pretzly and dipped in chocolate!

actually, held in celebration of the piece of paper you saw in the previous entry, but things that are thin, pretzly and dipped in chocolate did make their presence felt. (^_^)



just a little bit. (^_^) we didn't eat all of it, but we came pretty close. everybody who came was a little hesitant at first, but everybody liked it.. coz pocky will RULE THE WORLD! (^_^)

and for those of you who aren't into five hundred pounds of chocolate, we have a forest of shrimp!



and then we had some cake! because it can't be a celebration without cake! my mommeh had a cake made just like my book! yay! one day, i promise, i'll get that thing proofed and up for sale.

(and i swear i am going to STAB this freaking media library! it simply will NOT upload my cake picture. fine, we'll use flickr. that's what it's there for, after all. http://www.flickr.com/photos/notuboc/4204652259/)

i got some pans, and some gift cards, and of course, some dollars, which i have already put towards the studio, as i have begun calling it. i bought some organizational lovelies, and subsequently ORganized. i'd get a picture up about it, but studio notuboc now occupies two walls of the dining room, a little chunk of the kitchen, as well as a few boxes of shipping supplies in the garage, so it might be a little difficult to fit it all into one frame. (^_^)

i discovered things lurking in my pile of papers that i had 100% forgotten about, and about five tons of little ephemera. in the coming weeks, these things will find their way into book-shaped objects, and one day i'll stop being so lazy and take some pictures of these book shaped objects and get them listed on etsy. i promise...

~meredeth.
.

well, not entirely. i still live in my parent's house, but at least i no longer have to go to class each day. i no longer have to pay $1200 a quarter for one stinking class, to edge one eeking little tiptoe closer to graduation. i AM graduating. THIS SUNDAY.

yaaaaay! w000000t! the crowd goes WWWIIILLLDDD!!!

okay, seriously, 10 years and 6 months later, i've about had enough college, and i am ready to move ON with my existance.

and so i spent today at work planning to do just that! i bought this cool business planning thing from barnes & noble (with my All To Myself paycheck mentioned last time!) and now i'm filling it out, and thinking all about product lines, and marketing, and deciding what kind of sale i'll be having this weekend.

that's right, i'll be having some massive kind of sale this weekend, so that while i'm enjoying myself at the graduation ceremony, you might make your own weekend more enjoyable with the thoughts of blank pages. (^_^) also, i am planning on going all out with my shop in 2010, so i need to clear some inventory room.

this means that it will be one massive sale. normally i do free shipping, but this time it's none of the pansy stuff. (^_^) i'm going for buy one get one! i'll be putting a sign up in my shop on friday, but for those of you who read this blog, you get a little advanced notice. (^_^)

so get ready! graduation and BOGO await!

well, this should have been done yesterday, but i was so dreadfully ill yesterday that actually i'm still a little ill today. at least i am upright today. yesterday, not so much. (T_T)

nano this year was strange. i had so many other things going on, and then my final paper and attendant presentation was suddenly due a hell of a lot sooner than i had thought (like, a week sooner), so now that it's over, i mean everything, really over, i'm suffering from severe post-nano let down! (^^;) i keep wandering around, like, um, shouldn't i be doing something, like urgently, like right now? no. actually, i have precisely zero projects. my nano story actually isn't done, i've still got a couple of scenes to finish, but w/out the looming deadline of nano to back me up, i think that's going to be a bit slower in coming. and of course the fact that i literally spent the entirety of yesterday splayed out on the couch, barely able to lift my water bottle to my mouth to prevent total dehydration didn't help my ambition. (^^;)

not that meredeth ever stays idle for long. oh no. (^_^) i got about five entries behind on my YOUkun translation blog, so i did a couple of those entries (i'll catch up soon, folks, i promise!) and i cut out paper for two book blocks, which i'm punching and sewing right this very moment (more non-traditional books made from candy boxes to come, watch the shop, folks!), so it's not like i'm doing nothing, but the absence of deadlines is definitely disconcerting. (^^;)

for instance, i got paid the day after thanksgiving, as usual, so i went out on black friday and spent nearly the entire thing, as 100% NOT usual. i can't even remember the last time i got to spend my paycheck, my /whole/ paycheck on whatever i wanted. it was glorious. i bought a fancy new keyboard for our media pc, and a brand spanking new flat panel monitor to replace the 19" crt monitor we still had on the regular desktop, and i found the perfect present for my mother, which, because there is a possibillity, no matter how remote, that she may read this blog, i shall fail to name here but trust me it's cool. my last couple of paychecks for the year will be going to christmas presents and saving up for an apartment (i hope to move in late january or early february) so it won't be happening again any time soon, but it was really nice to have no restrictions and nothing i had to buy. christmas this year is going to be fun. (^_^)

looking ahead to next year, i'm (hopefully) going to spend january and february either preparing to move, moving, or settling in to a shiny new apartment (and adjusting to life w/out five other people constantly walking in and out of the room), and then i think i'm really going to throw my back into my business. i 100% neglected my etsy shop this year, and yet i'm pretty sure it managed to make me a fair amount of money. i was already planning on going official in 2010, getting a vendor's license and all the attendant tax payments that go with it, but maybe i can even save up and get to a few workshops this year. i am currently 100% self-taught as a bookbinder, and it would be really nice to get some instruction on advanced techniques and maybe see how others do the binding thing. certainly meeting otheer bookbinders face to face would be awesome. our bookbinding etsy street team (BESTbooks!) is 100% awesome, but i wouldn't mind talking to some of them across a table, rather than just typing at them in a chat room. (^^;)

for now, though, i have plenty of time to chill out and do nothing for a while. it's already growing on me. (^_^)

... normally, i guess, year-in-review posts happen in december, but i think for many Wrimos, the close of NaNoWriMo feels more like the end of the year than december does. puts us all in nostalgic/recap modes. it certainly does that for me~

anyway, i guess i'm off to do something 100% unproductive w/ my time. maybe i'll go play harvest moon! (^_^)

this post brought to you 100% by the urge to do nothing.
.

i very nearly didn't put a hyphen in that. just a little word count boosting tip, ladies and gentlemen, hyphens are the enemy. (^_^) in a related note, i caught up from a four day deficit and am now approximately half a day ahead of myself. i don't know how many of you have been through a final quarter of college, but let me just say, for those of you who have yet to experience that peculiar joy in life, ZOMBIEJESUSLETMEOOOOUUUUTTT!!!

seriously, i graduated from high school ten years and six months ago, and i am 100% ready to graduate from college and stop paying people money just so that i can learn about stuff i no longer have the mental capacity to care about. especially the part where you have to write 15 page papers on topic that you literally are physically incapable of caring less about than you currently do. (X_X)

...

okay, actually, there really is not anything i am not curious about, at least a little bit, but the problem is that you have to fill out 800 slips of paper just to take one class that you only care about a little bit, and then you have to hope that the miminum-wage/work-study employees who are supposed to be teaching you how to fill out which slips might actually be pretending to care about their job on that paticular day. the classes themselves weren't bad, many of the professors were even great, but the paperwork made me want to jump in a lake.

however, in more important news, the RSVPs for my graduation party are coming in! so far we just have the expected SORRYs from those too far away to make it, but i'm hoping tomorrow will bring some YESes from church members. for you here on the internet, here are some shots of the invitations, since i can't send invites to all of you. (^_^)





i don't have any regular pictures of the insides, but the top just announces the graduation ceremony (december 13er at 2 PM!!!) and the bottom gives all kinds of details, like the web address where OSU will be putting up a live video feed of the event (http://commencement.osu.edu). then the little slip of paper with the weird colored thing on the side is the actual party invite. some people didn't get them, only because we got to fifty invitees and decided we might not have that much house space, so we had to cut it down a little. the weird colored thing is a pocky, which is what we will be eating at my party. for those of you who are unaware of pocky, check the amazon page for hideous details. i never knew there were so bloody may kinds of pocky, but i am eager to eat as many as i can! (^_^)

these days, i'm getting used to not having any urgent projects that must must must be done. i really have nothing that i have to do this weekend, so i'm kind of like, ... what? for the moment, i'll try upping my current 47409 words (o YEAH babee~) and maybe i'll (gasp!) make some art!

gasp.
.

that is all.

now with 500% more recycled plots! keep your environment green!

#fail

speaking of fail, my word count currently stands at 17,949 words. i know! sadness! (for those of you who have no idea what i'm talking about, you must be in the wrong place. or you've come in from my new round of google ads. you want http://yatsu.etsy.com for blank books.) for the rest of you, just know that i should be at 18,337 by the end of the day. not that that isn't possible, just that i have EIGHTEEN HUNDRED OTHER THINGS TO DO before i'm allowed to write. (T_T) let's see, shall i depress myself by listing them?

...
...

for your amusement, yes. i shall. (^_^)

actually, it's not all bad. for instance, the graduation announcements i'm making (at LAST!) are very cool, very shiny, and ... well, frankly, very glittery. (^^;) seriously, there is glitter all OVER this table right now. (T_T) after my shower the other day, i found still more glitter on me. IT'S EVERYWHERE~

anyhow, i'll have some pictures of the real things when i'm done with them, but for now, i can at least show you the paper i'm using for the outsides.





the silver pack is just screenprinted designs, so that's not so glittery, but the black and white pack has a couple of papers that are simply swimming in glitter, and so now so am i. (T_T)

let's see, what else is on my to do list. oh yeah! my book for the BESTbooks holiday giveaway! i was hoping to ship it out, um, oh wait, TWO DAYS AGO (T_T) but of course, that didn't work out, so i've been feverishly trying to get it finished. it's due at the organizer's house on the 24th, so i really need to ship it out this week if i want it to get there in anything like an appropriate time frame. in fact, i was so dedicated to finishing the bloody thing that i took it to work with me today. now, today being a national holiday (super thanks veterans!) (seriously, i like my freedoms. make a point of enjoying at least one of them every day.) i figured we'd be super dead at work today (i work as an intake at a medical/insurance call center). why we were even there today, i seriously do not know. (in retrospect, i think i may have been there to hear adan call himself 'the great' one more time. (^_^) ) (now don't worry, adan has enough ego to survive any slights he may get from my little blog. anyway, he reads this thing regularly, and i know he reads this thing regularly, and he knows that i know he reads this thing regularly, and i know that he knows that i know that this recursive crap has gone on far too long now, so to summarize: you know i love you, adan! we cool, right? (^_^) have no fears, etiquette masters.) eternal parentheses aside, i brought my christmas book to work with me, hoping to finish it while we were dead. well, as anyone with a good sense of story can guess by now, we were totally not dead. indeed we were the opposite of dead. that didn't stop me from completing my book (that's right adan, i was sewing while we were chatting it up. take that! (^_^) ) and so i prove my point by presenting you with a photo i took at work with my cell phone. (p.s., g1s rawk~)

...
...

or at least i would if the server would talk to me. hellooo, server!

...
... speaking of #fail ...

fine. for now, you can look at my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/notuboc/4096614177/

anyhow, i didn't really have a plan on how to bind it, so i think this style of binding is called "i made that shit up" but everybody seems to like it, so i guess we just won't tell them. will we? (hint: the correct answer is, "no ma'am." (^_^) )

it's got 50 pages of cold press watercolor paper in it, and the cover's actually made from leftover matt board and a sticker i found at my local paper dive. they also had a halloween sticker, which i didn't find until it was a little too late for the holiday, but i'll make it just the same and have it up for next year. (^_^) i broke a needle making it, and nearly got the broken needle stuck in the book, since i wasn't able to bring all my fancy tools to work with me. i am one sad girl without my fancy tools. (T_T)

...

i also have to address these silly graduation announcements. which, you wouldn't think would be crazy time consuming, but i'm sending like 50+ of these things out, so it's taking me a while just to gather the necessary addresses, let alone apply the addresses to the envelopes. as some of you may have seen on my twitter stream earlier this week, i never fully appreciated the complexity of my friends' life situations until i had to find the correct way to address envelopes to, for instance, two guys, two girls, two brothers, two sisters, family members with varying last names, family members with the same last name, married couples with completely different last names, et-liberal-cetera. on the scale of hardness, i guess, not much past graphite (if you get that joke, you are officially too NERdy. return to whichever science building you just came out of) but for easily-amused me, it was super fun. i've never had a party this large before, and i've certainly never thrown a party this large before. in fact, i'm pretty sure i've never even been to a party this large --- well, that's not true. i've been to a couple of wedding receptions larger than 50 people before, but i quickly made an excuse to duck out. meredeth is not a party person, she does not enjoy crowds (which for her means any group larger than three people), and she really does not enjoy being the center of attention (despite what she'd like to put up as a front). i much prefer to come up with an idea, implement the thing, fix whatever problem existed, and then go on about my life. a little thank you card is plenty sufficient, thanks. i do not need parties, big announcements, whatever. but in this case, i'm making an exception. a) because i really want some pocky (we're having a pocky tasting party), b) because i have the idea that some of my friends would really be surprised by some of my other friends, and also c) because i worked fucking hard this year, and i need some drinking. basically there have been so many moments over the past six or eight months when i thought i might not graduate after all, that i decided to throw a big party just as a symbolic flip of the bird to OSU. and of course it gives me an excuse to get glitter all over everything. (^_^)

anyhow, the other thing i have to do this quarter is write a ginormous paper. a 20 page paper AND a 15 minute presentation, due at the end of this month. not that i'm working too hard. as my friend says, a C = graduation. i don't have to get an A in this class to graduate, so i'm not going to be terribly disappointed if i'm not on the dean's list or whatever. it's not like i have any chance of getting honors or even substatially improving my GPA, so i might as well reduce my stress level.

not that perfectionist me isn't gonna be pissed off about my sucktastic final paper whenever it does get finished. it does, however, mean that perfectionist me will just have to stuff a sock in it.

... well, in the two hours it took me to write this post, i've finished 18 graduation announcements, eaten dinner, checked my email, listened to the macarena, wished i hadn't listened to the macarena, gotten glitter over myself all over again, etc etc, blah blah. what i have not done is written any story.

~meredeth.
388 words behind at 11 pm...

(this post brought to you by the neverending parenthesis. like the neverending story, but with less flying furries.)

well, here it is, day six, and i've only now gotten my first chance to post a blog-a-blog about it. seriously, this week (well, actually this whole year, but that's a whole other rant) has been CRAZY. i'm at just over 10990 words as of tonight, which, considering is was ~150 words down as of this morning, ain't to shabby, even if i do say so myself. i'm resurrecting one of my old ScriptFrenzy plots, one i've had kicking around in my story idea folder for several years. i've decided ScriptFrenzy isn't for me (two attempts, so sooper fails) but i owe it to the story ideas to at least try writing them. they weren't bad, just not screen plays. (^^;)

tomorrow, i've got a write-in down at the main library on campus. so, if any of you want to join the excrutiating fun, please join us about noon at the library on the oval down at OSU. the newly renovated building is actually awesome, despite my disgruntledness over the price tag, so it should be a cool write-in. to tell you the truth, i hardly ever go to write-ins. i find i'm more comfortable writing when i'm 100% alone, but this year, i can't resist the pull of writing at the new library.

anyhow, i'm not about to post my entire NaNovel online (i do have some dignity left, you know~) but i will put up the prologue. it's got some severe (and i do mean severe) tense issues, but it should meet minimum standards of readability anyway. i.e., there are words, sentences, /and/ paragraphs. this does not mean they are necessarily related to one another...

seriously, NaNo is about quantity, not quality.

NaNovel prologue

= prologue =

As seen from Earth, it was terribly small, just a tiny speck in the night sky. Two full days passed before anyone realized how dangerous the situation was, before the astronomers finally compared the marks they'd made on the first day to the marks they'd made on the second day, before they realized it was coming straight for them. By then, of course, it was much too late to do anything about it.

Humanity as a whole remained largely unaware of the danger they were in. Civilian astronomers, of course, saw the thing, took note of it, could calculate velocity and trejectory as well as their military counterparts, but they lacked full knowledge of just what was hurtling towards them. They demanded answers, of course, filed petitions, had news conferences, but the government didn't budge. They knew they had only to wait.

Those that did know what was headed their way took their last days in stride. They knew what they had gotten into when they started, they were all aware of the risks involved. None of them alerted the media, none of them tried to run away. They knew there was nowhere to go. Behind the thick walls of a supposedly abandoned military facility in northern California, the two high-ranking military officials who had started the program shared cups of instant coffee and rice cakes they'd commendeered from the local grocery store the previous day.

``Just seems a waste, that's all I'm saying,'' said the older man.

The younger one shook his head. ``I'm not disagreeing with you, sir.''

``All that work, months of planning. Not to mention all the man power it took to even attempt to get that thing into orbit.''

``To say nothing of the entire human endevour.''

``Well, not nothing. The whitecoats upstairs said a few pockets might survive.''

The younger man gave his superior a sarcastic look. ``Do you see any of those white coats around here, sir?''

After a moment, the older man cracked a bit of a smile. ``You've been pretty sassy to me today, Lieutenant.''

``Looking to courtmartial me, sir? We've got a few minutes left.''

The older man laughs out loud, the surprising loud noise carrying down the empty halls and reverberating off spilled filing cabinets. On the roof above them, a small group of those whitecoats huddled together with their faces pointed skyward. The tiny speck had grown considerably larger, and was now recognizable as a man-made object. To those who knew what it was, it was recognizable as a satellite, put into orbit by the United Stated government in the hopes of controlling the weather in the western half of the country.

One of the scientists on the roof pointed a finger. ``Look,'' she said wryly, ``the flaps are up.''

``Great,'' one of her compatriots mumbled, ``now we'll spread it all over the country.''

***

On a residential street not terribly far from the scientists' last stand is a civilian who knows what the dot in the sky is. He's always known, in fact he knew before the scientists did, before they ever started their fated project. Cale [who has no last name at the moment, sorry] lurks outside the livingroom window of a middle-class home, watching TV with a young man who doesn't know he's sharing his news broadcast.

``The president has been missing in action since late yesterday,''

the news anchorwoman says, ``with Press Secretary Adam Mitchell still claiming that the President is down with pneumonia, all but chained to the bed by Presidential physicians.

``Meanwhile, astronomers around the world are being joined by other scientists in their demands for more information. Some astronomers have put out images within the last twelve hours of the object they believe is headed straight for us.''

A picture of the satellite fills the screen. At the window, Cale stops breathing. He knows he shouldn't move, that there's nothing he can do, but he's wondering if maybe there wasn't something else he'd been hoping to accomplish with his thirty-four years on this earth. He's thinking about stealing this poor man's car and racing up to the abandoned military base to see if there's anything he can do.

The anchorwoman continues. ``As you can see, the object does carry the markings of a United States military satellite, but thus far its exact origins and purpose remain unclear. The State Department has repeatedly denied all knowledge of the object, and the Pentagon, in what can only be described as a highly unusual move, has made all its employees unavailable for even off-the-record comments.''

Eyeing the brand-new silver compact in the driveway, Cale sighs.

``All right, fine,'' he whispers. ``If I fail it won't matter anyway.''

Leaving the news anchor to interview on of the petition-filing scientists, Cale sneaks around to the car and tries the door handle. Only mildly surprised to find it unlocked, he reaches below the steering column and removes the plastic guard from the wires. After a quick inspection, he removes his shoe and knocks off a portion of metal from below the steering column. The falling metal makes a rather loud clang, and Cale keeps very still until he's sure he hasn't been found out. He slips into the driver's seat and roots about under the steering wheel for three specific.

He twists two of them together and then touches the third to the first two and the car starts. ``Thank God,'' he whispers.

He takes a moment to scribble out an apologetic note and leave it in his benefactor's mailbox before pulling out onto the street and speeding away.

this is what i've been doing while waiting for my internets to come back up:



mm? why is there a skull? and some kind of green vial thing... and what in the name of the gods is up with all those ruffles? meredeth, what have you made???



a calm classy exterior...



but a gruesome and bloody interior!!! that's right, it's a jekyll/hyde book. (^_^)



i took 11 pictures, but only 5 fit in my etsy listing, so here in this fancy blog post, i present to you the results of my over-happy shutter finger. (^_^)















it's on sale in my etsy shop, and it's my entry for this year's BESTbooks Zombie Award, so if you like it, i'd appreciate a vote when the tally goes up friday the 23rd on our blog. thankies~

now that the saga is nearly complete, i feel i can write about it. those of you who know me (and those of you i answer calls from at work with any frequence (^_^) ) know that i've been having some difficulty scheduling classes/graduating these past few months. it turns out i've actually been having trouble these past few years, i just didn't know it. the problem lurked, and i was caught unawares. so, for those of you interested, i here chronicle my saga.

1999 - that's right, i first attempted a college career ten years ago. it started well, financially at least. i got some scholarships, i tested out of several classes, i started an architecture major. or course, i soon cooled on that, and decided not to go to class that often, so my first quarter resulted in a 1.557 gpa. after i was 11th in a class of 350+ in high school. yeah, not going to class was definitely my nemesis.

2004 - but i managed to control my demons, get on the dean's list three or four times, and changed my major from stupid architecture to beloved english. things were going alright, i was finally taking classes i liked, i was getting good grades, i was going full time and actually attending class. (^^;) then my father quit his job, tried to find another one, failed, moved to chicago, found a job there, we put our house on the market, had a buyer lined up, where about to move to chicago. this involved my father and brother living in chicago in a(n astronomically-priced) one-bedroom apartment, while the rest of us lived here in columbus in a house that was on the market, could be sold at any moment, and out of which we were regularly cast in an attempt to bring buyers into the house. we also had to keep it clean and spotless. in summary, i was under A LOT of stress. so when i ran out of funding that fall, and the financial aid department refused to help me (the fact that we were maintaining two households was not, apparently, ground for financial hardship. yeah.) i dropped out. to this day, i am surprised at how easy that was. no one even asked me why.

2004, later - the offer we'd had on the house fell through. it never sold.

2005~2008 - we gave up on relocating to chicago, dad quit his job there, moved back to columbus, we started to pick up the pieces. on a personal level, readjusting to that many people was (still is) hard. i'm not a people-person, i hate large groups. there's 6 of us now, plus three cats. it's like living in a boarding house. keep this in mind for the emotional trip we're about to have, when...

April 2008 - i reapply to go to college. i finally figured i'd spent enough time lazing about, i was 26 years old, i was finally gainfully (re)employed, and at a decent rate. it was time. and here is where the problems start. when i dropped out, i imagined myself to be about three quarters from the end. i figured i had a couple of general curriculum (GEC) credits to get out of the way, and then four or five major classes to take, and i could graduate. i filled out my FAFSA (the federal application for student aid) and duly sent it off to the local community college, where i planned on taking my last GEC courses before transferring back to OSU (ohio state) to finish my degree. well, i then investigated precisely what classes i could/needed to take. turns out i was considerably closer than i had imagined. as in 6 classes from the end. if not for the need to maintain a work schedule, i could have been done in two (albeit packed) quarters. unfortunately, i needed to keep my job. so i investigated precisely what 6 classes i needed: 1 GEC course, 5 english major classes. none of the classes i needed were offered at the commmunity college that i had sent my FAFSA to. and it was long past the deadline to send them to OSU. so i formed a new plan. one class a quarter at $1200+ a pop, for six straight quarters, with a graduation date at the end of Autumn quarter 2009. great!

May 2008 - met with advisor, was informed i had been out of school so long, i had to abide by revised graduation requirements. got paperwork telling me which six classes i needed, reapplied to go to school. all things (apparently) on track.

summer, autumn 2008; winter, spring, first half of summer 2009 - took classes, one at a time, adjusted work schedule to fit, enjoyed myself with all kinds of new learning, really hated my summer 09 course, but took it anyway.

early 2009 - i fail to fill out a FAFSA for this year, either, as i believe i will not qualify. you need at least 6 credit hours to qualify for aid, i will only be taking 5.

july 2009 - applied to graduate. the advisor reviews my classes, she says to me, are you also planning on scheduling this last elective for the fall?

...

...

what elective?

surprise, you have one more, silly, stupid, lower-level GEC class to take. social sciences. this is the new requirements i was telling you about.

...

...

oh. (T_T) well of course, i'd better schedule it, then, hadn't i. (commence freak out)

august 2009 - attempted to clear holds on student account, due to first) student loans that needed to be in deferrment but weren't, second) $400 past due balance from autumn 2008 because system continually mis-interpreted which balance i was attempting to pay, third) previous balance from summer 2009 because it took me so long to clear the other two holds. in the meanwhile, i investigated the disconnect between what i thought i was supposed to take and what i was actually supposed to take. i unearthed the pack of papers the advisor had given me some 18 months earlier and i discover the problem: the paperwork she gave me was incorrect. it has only 10 hours of social sciences required when in fact 15 are required. she said revised requirements, but she gave me non-revised paperwork.

september 18 2009 - i do not have the money to clear the hold from summer quarter. $630 cannot simply materialize from thin air in time to schedule a class for autumn quarter, which is now less than two weeks away. figuring it is easier to simply fullfill the requirements rather than argue with the woman about whether she did or did not give me the incorrect paperwork. so i head down to the financial aid office to stand in line for two hours (literally) and then be told that i don't qualify for much, since i didn't fill out a FAFSA. this mysterious extra class will put me well past the 6 credit-hour threshold, but since i didn't know about it until five months after the FAFSA deadline, i did not file one, and therefore can only receive the minimum of help in paying for it. it turns out the only thing i can get is a $500 emergency loan, which i duly apply for. the man tells me i should have a notice the following tuesday telling me to come in a sign a promissory note for the loan.

september 22 - the following tuesday comes and goes without any notice.

september 23 - the first day of class. i wait in line as long as i can at the financial aid office, but i have to go to class before i get to the front of the line to ask why i haven't received my notification.

september 24 - thursday. i'm working 10-hour days now, to make up for the time i have to take off for class. three 10-hour days will give me enough hours to qualify for the health plan, and still leave me 2 days off to take two 2-hour classes on those days. i don't get ahold of anyone at the financial aid office. i work at an inbound call center, i cannot make a call while i'm answering them.

24th - friday. i call the financial aid office on a whim on my way to work. a miracle! i get put on hold! previously, the system was so overloaded, it simply hung up on you. i'm on hold 45 minutes, somehow taking calls on my work phone while i'm on hold on my cell phone, and finally i get a person. she seems to have trouble pulling me up, she says hold on, let me investigate, and my phone goes dead. i've been hung up on. i decide that's it, i've had enough. luckily (a word i don't get to use often, at least not these days) i have an awesome boss, and she lets me use a landline to call the financial aid office. i am on hold an hour and a half, but when the gentleman who answers the phone has the same difficulty in pulling me up and suggests that i hold on while he investigates, i am not hung up on. he comes back on some minutes later to tell me (apologetically, to his credit) that there is no record of my application in the system. who did i turn it in to? i describe the two guys i spoke with that day, he puts me on hold again. minutes pass. have they actually lost my paperwork? the quarter has already started, i need this money to relieve the hold on my account so that i can schedule my second class. have they lost my paperwork?

...

...

they have. i have to go back down to the financial aid office to fill out another one. the gentleman suggests i speak to a councilor rather than just the guys at the counter. probably the most timely helpful suggestion i got from anyone at that university. but, i've already taken up 3 hours of my work day, i cannot take up any more. i haven't got that many time-off hours left, and the way things are shaping up, i may need them. it will have to wait for monday.

september 28 - i arrive at the financial aid office bright and early, hoping to bypass the long lines. well, at least this time i was only in queue an hour. i spoke with an actual councilor, she left a note in my account to the effect of, we've lost this once already guys, let's try doing our jobs this time, and i leave relatively happy. my new notification should show up wednesday i then head from lincoln tower (the location of the office of doom) to denny (the english department and heretofore home of the arts/sciences advising department) to meet once more with my adviser and revise my graduation application, to add the new class i'm going to have to take to the ones already listed. i get to denny hall, only to find that the office has been temporarily relocated while denny is under some renovations. guess where they are now? yeah. lincoln. so i walk all the way back to where i just was. the soonest meeting i can attend is wednesy, the 30th, early. fine, i'll take it. i go to the class i haven't even scheduled yet, to explain to the prof that i will be scheduling as soon as the hold is off my account and apologize for any incovenience.

29, tues. - a 10-hour day.

30, wed - still no notification. my meeting with my advisor goes badly. not five minutes in, i'm in tears, as she flatly denies giving me the incorrect paperwork, despite the presence of her check marks all over my pages. she presents my options: petition to have one of my (85 credit hours worth of) extraneous classes count for the surprise requirement, or petition to have the requirement waived. finding a class to cover the requirement would involve finding a syllabus at least five years old, probably older, so i guess my option is to petition to have the requirement waived. we fill out the same form, check different boxes, and i have to write a letter explaining my need. i completely fail to bring up my other questions, i just want to go home and curl up under the sheets. i declare a mental health day and go home. i email the nice anthropology lady to say i won't be taking her class after all, i email a super awesome english prof to apologize for skipping her class. i write my letter, email it to my advisor, move on with my life.

later that night, my advisor calls me to say, why are you even taking that english class, you don't need it. i'd noticed that, too, i said, my english major classes don't seem to be as i assumed they would be, although the system says my major's been fullfilled. she says she'll forward my forms on to the committee of old dudes that decides these things, but she can't really recommend they agree with me, since i could be taking the class i need instead of the one i don't. i tell her i'm in the middle of an epic battle with the financial aid department about a loan to get the hold off my account so i /can/ schedule something, and suddenly a miracle occurs: she makes a useful suggestion. i can have them temporarily remove my hold, just 24 hours, but long enough for me to schedule. oh, i say. i'll look into that.

still later that night, i call in sick to work for thursday. i've caught whatever flu my sister had the previous week, and i've gone through an entire box of tissues since i've been home. it's probably best i refrain from infecting the entire department.

october 1, thursday - i call the financial aid department again, about temporarily removing my hold so i can schedule. oh sure, the girl says, no problem! come down and pick up this form and hand it over to the bursar, and we'll do it.

...

...

seriously. by the way, i ask, where's my notification for my promissory note, which /still/ hasn't shown up. let me check on that.

...

...

well, you didn't have a financial aid account, since you didn't file a FAFSA, so we had to create one for you. that takes an extra day of processing, you should have it tomorrow morning.

i leave for lincoln tower once again...

but i haven't even made it to the highway before my mother calls me. the lady from the financial aid office called back to the house phone. turns out she can do that hold release thing from there, i don't need to come down. awesome! i race home, plug in my course's call numbers, and...

am told i don't have access to schedule classes. (X_X)

so i call the financial aid girl back. i get a different, a british, one. she says, of course you couldn't schedule, it's past the first friday of the quarter, you need prof permission to add a class.

oh. thanks for letting me know. i can pick one up at the advising offices in lincoln, or print one out online. well, i'll need someone to explain what i'm supposed to do with it, and all the professors i'll need signatures from are (supposedly) on campus anyway, so i guess i'm heading down to lincoln tower after all.

i get down there, i pick up a form, i head out looking for a prof to sign a form. i figure, the easier the class, the better, so i start by looking for a prof in townshend hall, for a lower-level sociology class on social deviance. his office hours turn out to be 7.45~8.30 AM daily. ok, cross him off my list. i head to the library (newly renovated) to find what other classes i can take. (p.s. our library was recently renovated, and looks lovely now. good to know my outlandish tuition payments are doing something useful, i guess.) i choose as my next targets, an anthropology class on pre-history. two options for class times, taught by TAs. i head over to smith labs to find them. smith labs is huge, by the way, originally designed for physics work, it houses the physics dept, the anthro dept, and at least two other departments that i saw. took my half an hour to learn that my targets were not there, didn't have set office hours, and in fact hadn't been seen by their fellows all week.

oh wait, you know that class i went to on monday, the class i emailed the prof about to say i couldn't take? she was super nice, surely /she'd/ sign a form for me! well, i left her syllabus at home, but i phone my mother (delightful woman that she is) to find the girl's office number/hours. hours = m/w 5-6 pm, number is nowhere to be found. the class is in bolz hall, so i head over there. no luck. i phone the anthropology department, since this class is an upper-lever anthro class, and they tell me her office is 4100a... wait for it... smith labs. where i just was. yeah.

so it's back to smith. i relocate 4100 (also the office of one of the unfindable TAs, by the way) and the prof isn't there. she's a new girl, not actually a prof, just a lecturer, on loan from the ohio historical society. ask down at the anthro dept office for her office hours. okay.

anthro dept office has no idea what her office hours are. she hasn't turned in a paper to them.

at this point, i decide it's time to go home and regroup. the syllabus with her info is at home, lunch is at home, my feet are really starting to hurt, i'm ready to kill.

i get home, double check the syllabus, call the office number listed for Dr Sharon Dean. the machine answers with someone else's number, but i leave my info anyway. if this isn't her number, why did she put it on her sheet?

lo! and behold, i haven't even finished my sandwich when Dr Dean calls back. i explain my situation, the delightful woman says she'd love to sign my paper, i could meet her at the historical society where she's working at the moment and she'd be glad to help me out.

AWESOMES!

so i haul serious ass to the historical society (which is a really cool place, by the way. i'd love to go for pleasure some day) and meet her in the lobby, where she puts her j hancock on the form. i thank her profusely, and hightail it back to lincoln tower - the advising office closes at 5pm, and it is now 4.

except i can't get out of the parking lot. the exit gate is operated by a $4 token slot, and i don't have any cash. i go back into the lobby, explain to the ladies at the counter my situation, and the politest lady in the world gives me a token for free. she was there to see me wait for Dr Dean and get me my paper signed. lovely ladies, both of them.

i haul ass back to lincoln, hand the lady my paper, and BOOM! i am signed up for my final GEC credit, i have dropped the english class i didn't need (which actually is really heartbreaking for me, coz it's the one class i was really looking forward to taking, and i really really liked the professor) and i can finally get some sleep at night.

---

thus standeth the saga. seriously, the whole problem could probably be attributed to my inability to finish my first attempt, but i place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the incorrect paperwork. if i'd known what classes i was supposed to take, i could have taken them. not that it's entirely her fault. my english major classes still aren't as i discussed with my special english advisor, who had to sign off on my major, but frankly, i think i'm going to leave it alone. if they'll let me graduate like this, i'm not going to question it.

among the other loose ends to tie up are the promissory note that i still have to sign. it's actually still thursday, so we'll see tomorrow morning if the notice shows up. i have one of those 10-hour days at work tomorrow, so if it does i'll have to go down at lunch and sign it.

why do i still need the loan, if its only purpose was to clear the hold that i've already cleared? turns out, if i don't pay my fees for this quarter by monday, they'll drop all my classes. so now i need the loan to pay for my current quarter fees, so i can keep the class i just scheduled. this means that i have to pay my fees tomorrow, because that's when i get paid. my full paycheck is only $618, but my mother is also one of those delightful women of this world, and she has agreed to supply me with the additional funds until i can pay her back. i've signed up for a tuition payment plan that splits the $1300+ due this quarter into two payments, but if the notes the financial aid advisor put in my account say only to apply the loan to my previous balance, i'll need another ~$90 that my mother will be providing. otherwise, i can use the $500 towards my autumn balance, pay the additional $130 and gain a couple more weeks to pay the summer balance.

we'll see. i'm not counting it a success until after i walk across that stage in december.

3792 words.
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o hai~ imagine that, my website is working again! =(>_)>

actually, it's been up now for a couple of weeks, but your humble narrator is much too lazy for that whole "updating" thing. (^^;)

well, ACTUALLY, she's been much too stressed out about Real Life (tm) to engage in thoughts about Internet Life (tm).

but this post is the promised fotodump. (^_^)

for a start, my phone takes uber-saturated photos. and, as you can see, taking photos whilst driving usually means a photo that is 45 degrees from level. (^^;)



not that the whole drive down was bright colors and boring pavement lines.



some of it was also boring colors and boring pavement lines. ... actually, there was a lot of fog in the ohio valley. or at least there was on the way there. by the time i got anywhere near ohio on the way back, it was pitch black and had been for some number of hours. (T_T)

oh yeah, and this picture i found in the virginia welcome center:



maybe not the name i would have chosen if left to my own devices...



on the bonus plan, this was my gas milage on the way down. ~400 miles to a tank, in a 1997 nissan altima in bad need of an oil change and about 6000 miles late for it's 90000 mile check-up. yeah. not bad.



this is the picture i took of the house the morning after i got there. it was super muggy, but gorgeous. i was so happy to be there, it was about the most beautiful thing i'd probably ever seen. (^_^) and we all had at least one palm tree on our little lot, too! good thing they're cool to look at, coz they were everywhere.





and it greeted me like it knew what i was about. (*joy*)

but there was one more thing required to make the house meredeth-appropriate:



there. now it's perfect.

there was plenty of wildlife to greet me, too.



my favorite was that poor lizard from the porch. he must have crawled in and then couldn't figure out how to crawl back out. the sun had turned him all mummified, too~



but maybe, like me, things didn't end all that badly for him after all...

because not a single one of you will see this post when it first goes up. because? silly 1&1 is having a 500 error at the moment. this won't stop me from making a post, though, because i said to myself the other day, self, you should make a blog post. so here i am, making one. i think mostly this is going to be a fotodump, but it's also going to be a narrative of my trip to florida.

which was awesome. by the way~ it was a glorious week of not having to listen to anyone, not having to worry if someone else was using the shower, putting whatever i wanted on the TV (which admittedly wasn't much), playing whatever i wanted on the stereo, going to bed whenever i wanted, making as much noise as i wanted (which also wasn't that much, but no one else was making noise that i didn't want, so that was nice), and waking up whenever i wanted (although that was more like, whenever the sun wanted, since it was super bright).

i left right on time (read: 7 minutes late) saturday morning and started out with vigor and enthusiasm (read: it was bloody 8:07 A-friggin-M and i should have been in bed, but the thought of spending an entire week away from my cell-mates made me giddy with glee). actually, the drive down wasn't bad (lots of pavement, but some really awesome mountains in west/virginia) until georgia. i was on i95 at that point, and had been for some 6 or 8 previous hours (the entire drive down took me a little less than 17 hours, just as google had predicted) and then it turned out that basically the entirety of georgia was under construction. (>_<) wow, that was annoying. but! i made it. i survived, i entered florida circa sometime past midnight, and continued on my way. the vacation house i was staying at (super thanks to nora!) was in a place called Vero Beach, or at least, is just outside of a place called Vero Beach, which itself is about an hour south of cape canaveral. it's a place where all the houses look like they came out of the same catalogue, the Old People's Retirement Savings package. it was a pretty nice house, a little buggy at first, but after a little clean up action on sunday, it was all better~ (^_^) i put up a youtube video tour (round about wednesday/thursday, after i finally managed to get ahold of some batteries...)



so you've heard my creepy voice now. i shall have to kill you. (^_^)

anyhow. so i killed the buggies, recovered from my crazy long drive, and settled in to a nice routinne of avoiding the humidity (which was hideous and oogly), binding books (eventually to be listed in my shop, but preview photo below), and watching pointless reality TV on discovery health (i.e. ladies who didn't know they were preggers and doctor's whose patients stumpted them until it was nearly too late). i did catch a few episodes of something called The Colony, where they stuck 10~15 people in a post-apocalyptic simulation area and let them go for it to rebuilt humanity. it was borderline obnoxious, but given my (slightly disturbing) interest in blowing up the world and/or otherwise bringing about the fictitious ending of civilization, it was like the best Research Opportunity i have ever seen. i watched about 6 hours of it before i felt like i'd had enough. (^_^) although, to my current shame, i have yet to write anything of any use about it. (T_T)

anyway, moving on in my Week of Justice, all was going just ducky... until tuesday. the air conditioner broke. it was like 80 when i woke up, and after i tried all the troubleshooting things and emailed my mother for suggestions and emailed Lovely Nora for suggestions, it was 85. by that time, the suggestion was to call the repair man, since all our other suggestions had failed. so the repair dude came out and charged me $80 to tell me that the coil was frozen, i should try leaving it off for a while, and maybe turn it back on that evening, and they would call me in the morning to see if i still needed them. (>_<)

so i did, and the air conditioner turned back on like it knew what it was doing, which by that point i seriously doubted, but i didn't really care that much by that point, because although the dehumidifier was still working (thank the LORD) 85 is no temperature for the inside of a house.

so then i got back to work.



i would have continued on my bookbinding flourish, but i ran out of paper. (^_^)

so on friday, i went to the nearby McKee Botanical Gardens.



it was really nice~ so humid that even god would have turned back (^^;) but really nice. i took about a dozen hundred photos~ and there was even a butterfly who stopped by just to say hello. it fluttered right in front of me, and perched down on a piece of grass right next to me. so i obliged it by taking its picture. a lot. and then i took a whole 30 second video of it. and /then/ it decided to flutter away. it stayed there for a long time. like, a looong time. it was very nice. like a send off. sweet~

anyhow, then i had to pack up and think about An End to The Vacation, and get all sad and stuff. (^^;) i packed up all my bookbinding stuff friday night, and then went to bed and woke up super disgusting early saturday, hoping to repeat my relative success of the previous saturday.

and here's where things get a bit interesting. my twitters from the car say it all:



[who ordered this bullshit? (>_<)]



[at this point, i'm just going to jump into the south brunswick. TRAFFIC JAMS ARE EVIL.]

it took me an hour. to go ten miles. yeah. i wasn't pleased.

but! i recovered. i moved on. i finally got out of georgia. eventually, i got off of i95 and onto i40. i passed through two incredibly beautiful national parks, one of which i couldn't really see, coz it was all dark by then, and i accidentally put my jesus christ superstar cd in the cd player when i meant kylie minogue. not entirely bad. (^_^) things seemed to be going ducky. i was getting close to ohio, i was eager to pass through cinncinati at night, coz i love that city, and especially the riverfront, and i knew that i was going to pass not terribly far from where i used to live. i pulled into probably the last rest stop on the kentucky side of i75 for a potty break and a stretch.

and couldn't turn my car back on.

!!!

luckily, some super nice trucker dude was there to help me out, but his diagnosis was as i had feared: dead battery. when i started the car up to go to those gardens on friday, the car hadn't really wanted to start up, but after a second it had, and i sort of hoped that maybe it was just griping because i hadn't used it all week. no, it was trying to warn me of Impending Danger.

so the trucker dude and i got my car restarted, and he was like, ok, but you can't stop, coz it won't start up again. (X_X)! i'm like, fine, okay, i just stopped for the bathroom, i've got plenty of crackers, and i'm only three hours from home. i just have to get some gas and--- oh.

i can't stop for gas.

but i don't have enough gas to make it home.

yeah.

so i phone my sister, thank god people in my house are up that late, coz by this point, it's pushing 1:30 in the morning, and i'm like, ok, so if my car doesn't start and nobody there can give me a jump, i may need you to come bail me out. she's like fine, cool, i'm ready! super awesome shoutout to sister yobo of jewelry-ninja.com (which may or may not be working due to previously mentioned 500 error issue)! so i hold out as long as i can, i get a super awesome half-tour of the riverfront circa 2 AM, until finally, at last, i have to stop for gas or i'm going to run out in the middle-of-bloody-nowhere ohio. when ohioans say middle of nowhere, we mean like, there's not a gas station for a dozen miles in either direction, there's not a town w/in an hour's drive, let alone a city, and in fact what there is is lots of corn, lots of children of the corn, and not even one single street lamp for about 50 miles.

yeah.

so i stopped for gas at what passed for Last Chance Gas Saloon and turned the car off. i filled up the tank, paced around the car, and prayed. super hard. SUPER hard. i get back in the car, i pray some more, i realize that there's no one at this gas station. it's me, and the the attendant. if i need a jump, there's no one here to give it to me.

i turn the key.

it doesn't start.

i super pray really hard. like, vein popping out on my forehead hard.

and it starts!!!

zomijesus i've never prayed so freaking much in my entire life. i slammed that car into gear and sped off before my car could change its mind. (^_^)

well, the final hour of my journey was much more pleasant than the previous hours. as long as my car was going, it would send electricity through the battery, and i could get home. if i had to stop for anything, for any amount of time, the car would probably stall out and there is no way in HELL i would get lucky like i just had twice in the same night. i couldn't stop. even for traffic lights.

well, that's not true. i tried to stop for the traffic light at the end of the exit ramp, but my headlights dimmed significantly when i pressed on the break pedal, so i looked real quick and there was no one, so i went. luckily, my street is about one light from the freeway exit, but unluckily, it's a left turn, and a very long light at that. i tried to stop, i really did, i swears it (^^;) but my car started making funny noises and the dude in the car next to me looked over like, wtf is wrong with her car? and so i honked my horn and ran the light and didn't look back. i pulled into my driveway and frankly i'm not sure if the car didn't stall out just a little bit before i managed to turn it off.

sunday was spent buying a battery (and, actually, going on a bit of a spending spree, something that was sadly lacking from my vacation due to a miss-timing of paychecks) and having my dad install it. the car's fine now, and looking back, it was kind of fun. i like challenges, i really like adventures, and even while it was happening, i was thinking that i had wanted a change from the normal, so that's what i got. overall, i think it was a very successful vacation.

mm? that wasn't that many photos? well... that's true. not that i don't have the photos ready to go. just that this post is about 500 years long already. guess we'll just save up those photos for another day's fotodump. maybe a day when my blog is working. (T_T)

~meredeth.

this post brought to you by 17 hour drives and dimming headlights. tally-ho!
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