They Keep Telling Me I'm an Adult, But I Don't Believe Them

My twentieth birthday was last week. I am no longer a teenager.
Whee?
I feel like I'm growing out of the house; I've already decided I'm staying at College next summer and working as a counselor at the summer arts program they run for kids. I would have this summer, but chickened out/procrastinated (shocker, I know) and didn't get the application in on time. I won't be able to do the house-sitting for my Psych teacher as I have for the past 3 years, but the money and the DISTANCE and the autonomy are all greater at school.

I got very happy-inducing gifts: money from the grands, which will almost exclusively go to things of which they would not approve, but which I will couch in neutral terms in letters. GLBT fiction and non-fiction become "books," and the corset I have been planning for for a year is "clothing."
My Mum, wonderful creature, got me 2 farcical ("Farcical aquatic ceremony!") comedies: Galaxy Quest and Dogma ("Outdated imperialist dogma!"...I do love the peasant). It is absolute coincidence that Alan Rickman stars in both of these. Total coincidence. Happiest pf all, I now have my own Heather Alexander CD! I'm vaguely embarrassed of the noise I made when I opened it... but only vaguely. Dad didn't need those eardrums anyway.

**Spoiler alert ahead for Dies the Fire series**

I've finished the Dies the Fire trilogy, and now wish to hunt down S.M. Stirling and beat him about the head and shoulders for ending the books with a bloody funeral, wedding, and ominous vision. Seriously, there are too many loose ends! What's the next book/trilogy in the series? Grah!

**End Spoilers**

This past week I sat in at a counseling office as a stand-in receptionist/gopher/paperwork minion. It was interesting, enlightening, and slightly bewildering.
(The fax machine is an evil, evil creature, and We do not understand its devious ways. In fact, We think that it it took a long walk out a close window, the world would be a better place. But that's just Our opinion.)
Paperwork is much easier.

I've made mention of doing a post that delves into my internal gender issues, and I will. Just not today, and not until I have a much longer stretch of free time, and less S.M. Stirling eminently on the brain.

Laters.
~Brill

Variol-ee, Variol-ah, variola-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aaah!

OK, so maybe it's not smallpox, but I did manage to catch the Death Plague that's been going around. It's already picked off 2 in my ceramics class (the one Ceramics IV, and the one other Ceramics II...it's not a big class). I felt fine when I went to bed (too late) last night, but when I got up for the mini-retreat and on-campus training for my job, I felt like I'd just had a bad asthma attack: sore, rough throat and lungs that felt beaten up. I had a dry cough all through training.
After training, I took a shower hoping it would give me some much-needed humidity in the lungs, but no-go. I slept for 3 hours and woke up feeling worse. I had a fever, full-body aches so bad that clothing seams hurt like sandpaper, and a non-migraine, non-sinus headache. That last one feels weird, because I almost never have them, and it doesn't pulse or push, it just hurts.
(Side note: Blogger doesn't like the word "doesn't" until I type it about 5 times. It prefers it be "does n.")
The fever has come and gone, and I woke from the nap with my heart pounding for no apparent reason.

I want to be better. I have 2 papers due in the next week, (though one paper is optional; one now on one book or one later on another) and I need to do research. Gah!

~Light

We are experiencing technological difficulties

My computer is a hop and a skip away from the electronic equivalent of sitting in the corner and blowing spit bubbles all day. Piece of crap appliance!

You know, if a teacher has to put materials on reserve at the library, and his class is bigger and about 10, he should really, REALLY put 2 copies of the packet on reserve. I came in a few days ago and got started on the reading but the library closed before I could finish, and I had forgotten my laptop or notepad to take notes from the materials. So I came in today when I don't have class (although I still have 1 drawing to go, and it's the pastel one) and the kente cloth packet is checked out. I got most of my worksheet (i.e. mini-papers) done, but I need the packet to get the info about the meanings of the patterns and colors in the kente. Grrgnawgnaw.

Happy election day! Sort of. Not that I intended to vote anyway, but i just found out last night that when I registered to vote in the college Democrat/Republican voter registration drive, none of the paperwork for anyone got filed. Big OOPS for them. I'm just going to sit back and watch the history being made. It would have been nice to vote in the first presidential election I was able to, especially considering the historic importance, but oh well. I didn't get my absentee ballot on time anyway.

In ceramics news, teacher-person (Mr. Sir as one classmate calls him) is filling the glaze kiln, so soon I will have some FINISHED pieces! WOOT!!! There might x2!! even be room for my cabbage teapot to go in there! w00t!

Thanksgiving break is in, what, 3 weeks? Yeah. After we get back there is only ONE WEEK of classes, then exams. Holy cow, it's so close to the end! We're learning matting in Drawing 2, and I need to go get mattboard when my paycheck comes (end of next week, I think she said). All in all, I don't not enjoy working Phonathon. I'm basically a telemarketer (boo, hiss), but I understand the reason we're calling and I'd give to the college if I were an Alumna. That, and I get paid. Paid is goooooood.
My upper wisdom teeth are acting up, and I have an appointment over Thanksgiving to see the tooth-getter-outer to schedule a tooth-getting-outing during Xmas. Man, that's a mouthful!
Our Photo class is taking a field trip today, to document election day '08! (It also helps that he's scheduled us to have the Architectural & Historical project now.)
More on that later. Possibly. Probably.

~Brill

(key music)

ToMOrrow, toMOrrow, I'll....... (dying notes)
...leave for Atlanta sometime after my classes have let out and HOPEFULLY make it in time to sign in at the hotel, get my ticket/pass at the con and still have time to rummage around in the dealer's room before keeling over from exhaustion or this migraine that's currently stalking me.
Man, that was a long sentence.
Anyway, everything is arranged, but not all the money is transferred to the people to whom it should be (namely me, except in one case). I really need to get together with those on campus who're rooming in the rooms I registered and get the money, or I will be walking around the con looking and not buying until I get paid back.

Photo class took a field trip to the park and downtown today. I hope the pics turn out well. It was fun, slightly informative in the photographic way, and highly informative in the I-know-where-more-things-are-in-my-own-town-now way. And he let us out 30 minutes early. Woot.

I went to an information session and signed up for an interview with Phonathon, the student-staffed calling center on campus that calls alumnae and parents with info on the school and solicitations for donations. Yes, I need a job that badly, but hey, I actually got off my rear and did something!

That's all for now, folks.
~Light

Hello? Anybody out there?

I love A/C. Really. I just don't understand why the dash is in there....
Anywho, I'm house sitting again, a short span this time, and I'm bored enough to blog. There's only so much SciFi I can read before my mind starts shorting out.
However, I come upon the problem of having nothing of any import to report; all major events are covered in Mum's blog, or if I DO have something about which I think, "hey, I should blog that," I invariably forget.
High points in my life:
+I have fewer than 365 days left as a teenager. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Neither Mum nor Da could say, either.
+I may, possibly, if there's room on the schedule, have gleefully gained gainful employment at a local pizzeria. Until I have to move back to Sburg.
+I have enough money to go to Anime Weekend Atlanta in September! I still need to get the ticket/reservations, but baring unforeseen fiscal disasters, I have sufficient funds. Which means more specialty manga, T-shirts with smart (-ass) sayings --see Mum's blog on Dad's Xmas gift-- lots of sugar, and possibly posters. We (Monkey, S if he does actually go, and some other friends) will probably stay in the motel/hotel we did last year. The only problem is transportation, and that may be solved if our other roommate, Sunshine, goes.

I saw Le Batard recently. He's doing much better, has his back brace off, and has been working out quite a bit to get back in shape. He lost a lot of strength in the accident and has been building it back up. Done a good job, too. He, Monkey and I went to see The Dark Knight the day after my birthday, and it RULED. Took almost 3 hours to do so, too! I love long, intense movies (NOT horror, that's Monkey's department), so that was an excellent movie.

E-chan gets back from Japan on the 8th, and the Flower gets back into town from summer classes on the 13th, so I'm having a birthday celebration a month late. All my siblings go back to school 1 week before I do so I have a week in which to hold a demonspawn-free party. Woot.
I cleaned the living room recently and got the kitchen a bit tidier (uphill battle, that room), so if I can keep them clean I should be able to have said get-together at home.

Mum looked at my schedule for next year (5 classes, if you don't count the class I intend full well to drop) and observed that the entire semester is nothing but art. I made the darn thing and I hadn't noticed that. I have Theatre, Art History (NOT with the Monotonous Teacher from Heck), and THREE Studio classes (Photog. 1, Ceramics 1, & Drawing 2). I also have nothing before lunch on Tu/Th, and nothing after on Fri. However, I am spending a collective 19 hours per week IN AN ART CLASS. Having had two of these teachers before and having heard horror stories about the workload from the third, I don't know whether to giggle maniacally or start rocking back and forth muttering incomprehensibly.

Well, for nothing that filled up a lot of space. One day when I have a VERY long span of uninterrupted time I think I may assemble a post on the subject of the perfect house. There will be lots of pictures, probably from houses around town. As oppressive as the town is sometimes, it has some real gems of architecture.

Ta-Ta!
~Brilliance and Light

(BTW, Spellchecker says 'manga' should be 'mange')

Straight lines, twisted brains, and winding infections

In one respect, my household is primarily composed of two groups: punsters and those who give them incredible openings. Neither category is static, but some of the one-liners that pop up out of nowhere have literally left me on the floor. Case in point: last night.

C and I were in the kitchen while I made cookies and we bantered back and forth about random topics. I complained that I had trouble keeping up with the 83-year-old who did an aerobics class on campus. He said that he'd done a workout video when he still lived with his mother, "One by Crawford somebody."
"Cindy Crawford? You did Cindy Crawford tapes?"
"Yeah, that's it. Honestly, I don't know how my mother didn't know I was gay; what straight guy in his right mind would do Cindy Crawford!?"
The inflection...the tone...truly, I almost lost my balance laughing. And it took him a moment to figure out what was so funny.

Sometimes I think that Monkey and I are way too similar. It is a constant running joke between us that we tend to think of/say/write the same things/noises/motions at the same time. Earlier today, after a long quiet period of not doing anything even remotely related to the other, we both burst out in vocal remonstrations against thoroughly inanimate objects (she a brush, I a carrot) ...at the same time. By the time we graduate, we will have mastered the art of telepathy! (At least, I think that would be cool. 'Course so would telekinesis).

Spring break was partially successful. S and I got the kitchen organized while Mum and Da escaped for a few days, I didn't kill either of the dibbuns, and did get seedlings and seeds (now sprouts) set up in my room as it is still too cold to put them outside. I do not have a job for summer, though a friend of Mum's said she'd send my resume (*mentally add accent*) to people she knows who might be looking for assistants, babysitters, nannies, etc. I intend to do this ASAP. My only problem (which developed during break) is that the only computer on which my resume is stored (the home one) contracted a massive virus of insidious and access-blocking virus. Grr.

Mentally cogitating on the vagrancies of the English language,
~Brill