What can I say? Sorry?

It’s November, which means it’s National Novel Writing Month, the real one, not the fake one I do in June by myself. Since I didn’t quite finish in June, I thought I’d do another month of writing, or at least of rewriting. That has yet to start. It’s effing busy around here, kids. I had two midterm papers, which was unusual. And I’m not overly interested in either of the two classes. They both tend to assign things periodically and add shit on all the time (like a paper proposal) and, to be honest, I’m not particularly interested in doing any more than we already have to do. The one has very little work, but it’s all theory and the professor is a million years old and quite particular about things. He’s not a hard grader, but he doesn’t engage in any sort of conversation, at least not with me, about what we’re discussing in class. It’s like he half-hears what I’m only half able to get out before he interrupts and gives his own version or ask someone else. Yesterday I finally talked over him. I have no incentive to give a shit about that class that I’m forced to take. And I learned that he’ll be one of the readers for my field paper this summer. Miserable.

I thought there was no way I could be more busy than I had been last year, but no, I was wrong. As usual, things always seem better in principle than in reality. That’s why theory is so worthless. Perhaps that’s a stretch, but still . . .

I’m trying to give a shit about the class and the professor, because he does work on some interesting things, but he makes me want to hate everything he stands for, things that I do personally care about, just because he’s a bastard. This might suggest that I don’t really care about those things, but I’d like to think I do.

Since last time I posted and now, I’ve been doing more than just get increasingly annoyed with half of my coursework, the half that’s relevant to my proposed dissertation work. I’ve taken trains and buses and taught GRE classes and tutored GRE students and met new friends and started doing adult things with J so that he can be on my health insurance when he moves here. We had our last “visit” over Halloween and it was fun, although we missed having Didi and Tom there with us. In an odd alignment of gay sensibilities, Tom and J unwittingly almost went as the same thing, but J added some props to his costume and changed from a ‘50s man to a professional geek with Ethernet, USB, and A/V cables. I was Trainer Bob, which went over well to those who had seen the show. People in different cities have said I look like him and considering that both sets of people were fit, I was thrilled. Sadly I don’t actually look like him, neck-up or down, but I have “a similar neck to head ratio” and similar length and color of hair, facial and cranial. So that was great. I got to spend money on new gym clothes and not on a costume I’d never wear again. But since I haven’t been to the gym recently, it can still be considered merely a costume.

The train and bus rides have been fun. I’ve learned that there are some trashy motherfuckers out there. Starting from the train ride to meet J for a short road trip to St Louis, I encountered to drunkards who had “a little boo boo” in the last city they lived in and had to go back to take a class or go to jail. Well, take those facts and add to it that they were drunk and on a train and you can guess why they didn’t just drive where they were going. We can all be thankful for that. And for the class they’ll be taking. Hopefully they get something out of it and hopefully I never find out. The man also started groping the woman and yelling about her boobies to the whole, sleeping train. He also sprawled out with one foot on top of the seat in front of him, in which sat an old biddy. She didn’t mind until he started kicking in his sleep. On the way back, it was packed and hot and I was next to a heater that ruined my life. It didn’t help my being sick at all and it didn’t really allow me to sleep, which I desperately needed after a sleepless, paper-writing train ride there, pre-wedding weekend and all.

Since then I’ve been on the bus. Taking the bus was at first really annoying, because I didn’t understand how it worked. And it still drives me crazy that even at its most efficient, with the earlier, less crowded and less frequently stopped bus arriving just before a bus to school leaves, it still takes me about as long as walking would. And it costs money. I seriously miss CM’s situation with its “free” bus pass. I also miss only having to take one bus to get anywhere, but I do love my apartment, so I wouldn’t change it, except for a loft. I’m having people over on Friday, which will be something. I had avoided having people over until I had a couch, but my grad program needed a host for a monthly get-together, so I agreed. I’m looking forward to it and have invited a couple of people not from the program. I have a feeling that, since last weekend was a “party weekend” with grads hosting parties on two different nights, a mandatory thing we have tomorrow during the day, the fact that no one lives nearby, and that it’s paper crazy times up in here, a lot of them won’t come. Or will forget. Or will conveniently forget. I won’t be overly concerned if that’s the case, as long as a few people show up. God knows I’d rather have eight people over than twenty-eight. We'll hopefully play all kinds of fun games though, including Bananagrams, which I just bought. J already fell in love with it, I think.

For the evening, I’m making some noshing food from my darling Alauna’s site. She told me what I can and can’t substitute and still have things work out. I have class in a little bit and then it’s off to the grocer’s, because I have no food in my apartment, although I did buy some breakfast stuff. And when I get home, it’s time to do as much of my reading as I can fathom before this weekend, which will be filled with paper-planning and proposal-writing and all that non-reading shit I used to be good at but I’ve since forgotten how to do because I haven’t been able to breathe between reading assignments. I think I’m just not going to do them anymore (except to skim), unless they’re relevant to my later work or they seem fun or there’s nothing else I’ve bothered reading for that class.

I can’t wait until Thanksgiving break, when I help my honey move in, and then we only have a week or two of class, which is brilliance.

Tastes like . . .

It's about danged time that I posted. I have a little more than half an hour before I teach the first real class of my new GRE teaching sessions. Starting on Friday I've begun tutoring a student on the math involved in the GRE. I realized that I take a lot of math-related things for granted, like a lot. Anyway, tonight is the first night of my GRE class and it, also, focuses on math, which is just super thrilling for everyone involved. I have to say there are some good tips and tricks to avoid getting bogged down in some of the nonsense that is the math section.

As usual for this time of year, I'm sick. I'm getting over it now, I think. I've been sick all week. I've actually been on the verge of being sick since September started, so it's kind of a miracle it only happened now. My sister, her husband, and their young son all visited, which was awesome. They weren't here for very long, letting J and I have a little private time, although most of that was spent in errands. Neither one of us ever has luck finding good, reasonably cheap shoes, so when both of us go shopping, it's even less likely. And in fact we didn't find any. While my sister's family was in town, we made a yummy Italian dinner, with recipes from Chow and my sister's great roasted potatoes. Humorously she had to bring lots of things and even made the mistake of assuming I might have a few things, which of course I didn't. Jason and I even went shopping but all we bought were things required by my recipes, since I had that list of ingredients (and V8 Splash for the little one's juice love).

Surprisingly, it wasn't a fiasco. We had a lot going on and tensions were heating as we cooked. Jason and I were trying to make three different recipes while my sister made her potatoes and helped where possible with our debacles. Jason was on chicken duty, since I won't touch that shit, and I was working the pasta and veggies. Let me tell you this, baby artichokes and broccoli rabé (rappi) aren't worth preparing. Baby artichokes are fine as they come prepared in a jar of happy delicious. Rappi just tastes like bitter. Both were properly prepared and, well, the artichokes were yummy, but they could have been a lot less work and probably cheaper. The pasta . . . well, there was a lot going on that evening and the pasta got forgotten.

Jason: Don't you have a timer for your pasta?

Thomas: No, it's just ten minutes, same as your chicken.

J: I'm not timing the chicken.

T: Oh, well, we'll just know it's done when the chicken's done.

T: You're already on the second side of the second chickens?

J: Yeah, why?

T: No reason.

J: The pasta!
Sister: Oh my god, the pasta's mush.

T: Please, it's fine.

And it was, more or less. Orechiette, just a lot undente. It didn't have a lot of flavor. I was told that the chicken recipe I found was great though. Sister and hubby took the leftovers of that home. And I got to keep pasta/broccoli leftovers as well as the amazing roasted potatoes! We also had plenty of wine and beer, so it was all good.

Since then I've been reading and reading and reading. And sleeping and coughing and being gross. I did have two moments of reprieve. One was with Wii Grand Slam Tennis (all four adults had played once the little one was sleeping and I had a solo reprise, for several hours, one night early in the week). The game is amazing and actually makes good use of the Wii remotes, unlike Wii Sports, which is kind of frustrating when it comes to tennis. The other pleasant moment was with Cake Mania. I'm not kidding. Amazon now has cheap, Bigfish-like video games to buy and download. I bought Cake Mania for 98 cents, although there was 8 cents of tax. Annoying. It's not like it was shipped anywhere, Amazon. So, of course in what little free time I've now been granted post-LSAT class, I'm wasting it making fake star-shaped cakes covered in lavender icing. Sounds like awesome. I'm sure there's advice in here somewhere.

Such a headache

Why do bees love me? I'm not sure, but they, along with bad luck, are following me around this week. And swearing at them no longer works! It's so weird. Maybe I need Colleen around for that trick to work.

I started this post on Monday morning, naming it "Such a headache" because, well, by Monday morning, my "week" had been shitty. And then I forgot about it as I went around doing other significant things. It was actually the weekend, but fret not, there have been minor annoyances and inconveniences galore since Saturday night.

I got home on Saturday night from being somewhere, probably Panera, because that's where I always am if I'm not on campus. I had decided to drive because it's far away and I had been tired of biking everywhere and it was getting cold, especially going downhill. My butt hurt and I'd strained something in an area where strains (at least from biking) aren't really appreciated. As such, I'd been thinking about getting a new bike. When I got home, I discovered I might want to get on that. Why? Because my bike was gone.

Some piece of shit had decided to walk up my driveway and along the side of my garage in a space two feet wide, surrounded by hedges, take my (stupidly unlocked) bike, and saucily walk it back up the driveway. Perhaps they biked it up. I don't know. What I do know was that it was not even that late at night. It was just dusk, if not earlier. Anyway. The gall! I wanted to punch someone or just shank a man. I finally told my downstairs neighbors, in case they had anything not tied down in the garage, which on my side is accessible since it's a manual door (or was until Sunday when my landlord fixed it). They were furious for me, so we went searching for it in the backyard. In case it had just fallen over or something and I'd missed it. We used my bike light, which I'd never put back on the last time I used it, to shine into the nighttime. No luck. Then we searched around the attic, not for my bike, but becuase we were on the hunt.

The next day I filed a police report and walked around my neighborhood, seeing if I could find it just hanging out on someone's porch after a drunken joy ride or backyard cruise. I didn't. And I was still mad, although getting over it. I'm still mad, though. And here's why: a.) it was a birthday present I got from my dad and then improved with a substantial chunk of change (also part of my birthday present from my dad), and b.) I know I used it more often than anyone else who might be tooling around on it now, the fucker. So instead of tooling around on my old bike, or buying a new one, because honestly it's going to be about 40 degrees in a few minutes and I wouldn't want to be biking in that temperature anyway, I've been taking the bus.

Now, I had taken the bus earlier in the week, on Thursday, if you'll recall, just to try it out. It was hell. I was excited that I wouldn't quite have to use it yet. And now I'm using it. I'll admit, when I don't stop at Dunkin' Donuts, I save about fifteen minutes, but it's still an hour total traveling time. It takes less time to walk. I know this because Monday night, after teaching my penultimate LSAT class, I walked home, at ten PM, through a scary scary quarter-mile stretch. I'd walked it during the day (there are photos of weeds from that area) and I'd biked it plenty of times at night, but it was usually after having gone downhill and going quickly. It's a sort of industrial, next to a not-highway highway, area that's totally deserted after seven PM.

I'm never doing that again.

Tuesday night I got the bus after some waiting.

Last night, I missed the bus from school to downtown by a few minutes (let me point out that I spent twenty minutes tutoring students whom I'd just finished teaching the LSAT course to) and had twenty to get down there before the bus I really wanted left. The walk is maybe a twenty-two minute brisk walk. (I discovered this after eighteen minutes). So in the last few minutes, I ran, overheating in my long-sleeved shirt, button down, sweater vest, and polar fleece, and rueing the minute I decided to wear my boots. Of course, that route at ten-thirty at night was also not a shining moment of beauty, but there were at least lights along most of it. I made it to the bus and got on and just stared at the ceiling for the next twenty-five minutes. And then I couldn't really fall asleep.

So the bus early this morning was just an additional insult. In any event, I'm getting the bus route down, and I'm using my time on the bus well. I don't get to listen to as many NPR PodCasts, in fact, none, but I get to do reading for class, which is much more useful! I got two of my three essays for one class done waiting for the bus and riding the bus today. It was awesome!

The other piece of shitty luck was yesterday morning. I was showering and at the point where I was washing my foot while standing on one foot. Of course, that one was still a little soapy and I don't have grippers on my tub, because it's old and I don't like the grippy things. Well, it was a bad combination and down I went like one of my dad's parents. It was sort of surreal, because, like all catastrophe situations it was in slow motion as I lived through it. I was able to grab the soap dish, which has, as so many do, an oh-shit handle. Thank goodness they do! I had a headache the rest of the day though, which, given the post title I gave this post several days ago, was an unfortunate foreshadowing.

((P.S. Something's on fire in Panera, I think.))

The upside is that I have lots of new writing material based on this stolen bike business, let me tell you. Some time after I've had time to write it out. And now I also know what I want for my next birthday, because I know what works and what doesn't in my Syracuse commuter bicycle.

In other good news, my boyfriend and then my sister, her husband, and their little guy, are all coming this weekend. It's very exciting! And I start teaching the GRE on Sunday, but it's about five hours per week of teaching and prep, instead of twenty-five, partly because of content, but mostly because it's for the next ten weeks, instead of all in three weeks. Thank the sweet baby G.

Fun with Netflix

I have Netflix. Who doesn't (or something similar) these days? But what's better than getting videos I never remembered putting on my queue of 200 or so recommended and never-heard of films is what Netflix has recently begun: specific categorization of recommendations.

Netflix always have recommendation categorization, as many retail sites do. You have long been able to shop/rent by genre, like comedy or drama. But now you can see how really jacked up you are, because there are really really specific category labels. You want to hear some of mine?

Cerebral TV shows

Critically acclaimed suspenseful crime movies

Quirky independent suburban-dysfunction movies

It changes every week or so, but I'm always thrilled to see what kind of weirdo I'm considered. It's like taking a personality test. I love those! You can even sort preferences by "taste" as well as "genre," hence specificity. Unfortunately I can't see any of my old ones, but they, too, were great, like "Mind-bending psychological dramas starring cute white guys that gay men wish were gay and in their bedroom right now" or something like that.

Dog Days

I've made it past the crazy person hump. I only have two more days of LSAT teaching left and neither is this weekend. What? YAY! I'm so kercited I could spit. My next class, starting four days after this one ends, is for the GRE and it's 2.5 hours per week, which is amazing. It also may be canceled because right now only one person has signed up. Of course now that I've crunched to learn this whole (LSAT) class in three weeks, I have a new class to learn. What it means is that I can actually do all my homework without developing that annoying eye tic. I've in fact already wasted much of today not freaking out about all the work I have to do this weekend. I of course still have a shit ton to do and this laxidaisical day was definitely part of my "relaxation" time this weekend. Let me explain part of it.

This morning I decided to take the bus instead of biking. It's been a pain in my butt, literally, to bike every day of my life. The bus here was a pain in the butt, too. From the minute I left my apartment to the minute I entered my classroom, I had been traveling or waiting for an hour and forty minutes. It takes me about twenty minutes to bike to campus and maybe another five to walk to my classroom. It wasn't really the bus line's fault. It was entirely mine, but I feel like shifting the blame a little since the lack of signs downtown was extremely frustrating. Having been spoiled by Pittsburgh, where I lived within walking distance of a busline to any place I would want to go, it was shocking to have to transfer. And it wasn't even free with my student ID. That being said, it was only $1.25 with a 90-minute transfer.

I was late for class by about ten minutes, but I spent more than that amount of time in Dunkin' Dounts, which is pretty much when it went steeply downhill. I had left my apartment about ten minutes early because it wasn't really clear where my bus stop was. I found it, next to the cemetary, in the grass. It wasn't even by a sidewalk and, given that it had been raining earlier, I didn't want to just stand there for ten minutes, so I walked to the shopping plaza where the bus "started" (with this line) and almost missed it. But the driver let me on and I settled in and we drove downtown, stopping at every single intersection. It was maddening. There are so many effing bus stops on my route! (It's great for people with wheelchairs, although God knows where they would have fit on this bus at rush hour.)

I arrived downtown at the central bus stop, a thousand years later and, hungry, went across the street to Dunkin' Donuts. After all, now that I was downtown, I didn't really know where to go to get the school line. I might as well have had breakfast, right? The thing I should have considered was that a.) there are two Dunkin' Donuts on campus, and b.) there were two buses that had "Syracuse" listed as their destination. Well, that's vague, right? I mean, that's what the city's named. And there wasn't anything that said it was part of the school's city outreach program paired with the bus system.

So I go to DD and can't even get in it's so busy. Eventually I get in and see that there are three people working (the cashier wasn't even supposed to come in, she informed us, but she did – at 3AM! Can you imagine?), rather slowly. And then they screw up my order, so it takes a while. But, honestly? I don't mind. I'm listening to Terri Gross's Fresh Air on Podcast. (Also, it's animal week on Fresh Air, hence the "subject" of the post. Also, the most recent animal week episodes have been getting me teary-eyed, even though I don't really care about animals.) I could wait all day! Besides, the woman in front of me told me the SU buses come right to this intersection. AND I discovered some cute architecture to look at while I waited.

I began to think that maybe I had spoken too soon, because once I got to the unmarked (but well-frequented) bus stop, it felt as if I was waiting all day. There was no "Connective Corridor" (the SU connection line) sign, so after fifteen minutes with nothing coming and no way of knowing what I was really looking for, I got nervous. I saw such a sign with the familiar little logo a block away and decided that I didn't really know what the woman in line in front of me had meant by saying, "Yeah, it stops over there," with a vague fling of her arm toward the street. So then I hustled around sidewalk-blocking construction (building rehabilitation that looked like a lot of fun from the next bus stop I waited at).

I stand there, where no one else is waiting, and feel a little self-conscious. I feel like I should look like I know what I'm doing, but clearly I just look like an asshole waiting around at a bus stop where no bus will ever stop. Everyone knows this, especially the workers on the building rehabilitation site across the street. I can feel their judgment. And as I feel it, I notice a bus that says SU - something else on its destination LED banner thingie. And it's coming toward me, but it's turning left and won't pass my bus stop. Well that's a piece of shit, I think. Oh well. Five minutes later, another one with an SU - something else on the LED thing does the same thing.

Then I fume and wonder, Is it worth it to walk back through the middle of the street since the sidewalk is closed, to pass these damned construction workers and their judging and go back to the bus stop I spent fifteen minutes at with no dice? The light for the bus turned red and I booked it. And they let me on. And then we waited. But I was on and eventually I got to school and to my class and my professor didn't mind because she's always late to everything, too. She also spilled her iced coffee over all of her notes half-way through the lesson. To be honest, she's actually the reason I was so excited to join the department. She's hilarious. But, in all seriousness, there's some sage advice in this tale, let me tell you. Well, I did, but I didn't bold it. I'll summarize it: just get on the effing bus.

Anyway, I'm at Panera and I got a tomato mozzarella sandwich. They had asked my name, which usually is not spelled the same way that everyone else in America spells the common name. I'm not sure why Panera doesn't know how to spell the name; my favorite though was Tomas (to which the person calling names added a little Latin flair), and most recently it was Thomad (an understandable typo given the keyboard setup, but, had it been some other day, when I was pissy, it might have been a perceptive moniker). Tonight, though, the person making my sandwich called, not my name, but something like "Tommots." Well, I was amused and a little thrilled at some new spelling, like Tamuz, the murdered Babylonian/Sumerian god-husband of Inanna/Ishtar. So I looked at the receipt and my dreams were crushed. The receipt had my name correctly. And then I looked elsewhere on the receipt, where the sandwich read "Tom Mozz," for my sandwich. It made me smile.

Now that I've got all that post down, I don't really have time to do the other two chapters of reading I'd wanted to do tonight, but that's okay. Maybe I'll do one. Why can't I do both in the four hours remaining in the evening? Tonight's trivia night! I love that I can expect that fun every Thursday night. For those interested in such things, we tied for third last week and we have aspirations for first this week (and every other week, I suppose).

What a Mess

So, my life has exploded with work and that's fine. It's sort of what I expected. There is some joy in that though. Last night I was at a trivia night with my department, so that was fun socialization with my peers. And this past weekend, Jason was here for the long weekend and we painted the sunroom (the first coat of it). It looks lovely. I've decided that I'm pretty much over my edible plants though and many of them will be going to the rabbits in the coming month. That's okay. I'm good with just a few decorative plants.

The other thing is that every now and again, even in the boring stuff I'm reading, which is about 2/3 of it, there's something hilarious. I have photographed (with my phone) some hilarity from Sir Walter Scott's Redgauntlet, which is finally getting good. Can you spot the humor in the Scottish song? Here's a hint: it's in the middle.

Filthy filthy book. And now the protagonist is cross-dressing.

Le Sigh

Mi madre arrives this weekend, potentially along with other relatives. We'll see. It'll be great to have her (and whoever else) come visit since my mom and stepdad only saw it when it was still "under construction" of a sort. I've been so fortunate to have so many visitors this summer! The school year is going to feel so lonely in comparison, which could be good since already I'm feeling the crunch of balancing all of the work I need to do. Every class has reading for the first day and I've finished all but half of one day's reading. I would totally rest on my laurels and do that one on Wednesday night (it's due on Thursday morning), but with Kaplan prep and with visitors this weekend (and Jason's long long weekend next), that's not really an option.

Where did the summer go? All I know is that I should have been writing and listening to PodCasts (and playing more Clue and Sims 3), and not some of the other things I was doing, like website design. Ahem.

I can't wait to go out to dinner somewhere yummy again. I was spoiled this past weekend of deliciousness with C, C, and R after a mostly austere (for me) summer. I've tasted yum and I want more. Good thing I get paid at the beginning of the month for school, instead of the end (or so I'm told)!