unsympathetic.net

It seems like lately, everything I do is in preparation for the move to Chico.

I’ve started packing up my room–going slowly, which is a marked difference from how I moved back home. I’m taking my time and going through everything to decided if I really need to haul it 100 miles north. So far, I’ve got a box and a bag full of donations, and filled up another trashbag with junk.

I’ve got stuff spread out all over the house that I’ve got to go corrall up. I’ve got a closet full of clothes and house items from when I moved back in–I’ve been storing a microwave for the last two years, because I knew I’d need it eventually. And this closet is not in my room, because that one is full of the clothes I wear daily and the yarn I like to look at but not use.

It’s not just at home where the preparations are. I’ve got a long list at work of things I need to get done in the next month and a half before I quit work. I told my mom she’d titled it wrong. She should have called it “Stuff Lisa Needs to Get Done Before She Ruins My Life and Goes to Chico,” instead of things I need to get done before I leave the office.

Two of the “hardest” things for me on the list is the back-up of reporters files, and the creation of an Access database. The back-up is hard because the files are a gigantic mess that I’ve been avoiding for the last two years. The database because I don’t know how to create an Access database, and I’ve been avoiding reading the book I’ve got to teach me.

It will all get done though. I work best under pressure, and the self-imposed deadline of August 15 is looming. Course, I may have to work on some of my work stuff at home, but that’s alright. I don’t have anything else to do in the evenings but pack, anyways.

– “This Week the Trend,” MmmHmm: Relient K

Awhile ago, Dorchester Publishing ran a small “contest”—fill out a survey, provide some info, and if picked, they’d send you an ARC¹ of a soon-to-be published novel. The only stipulation was that if you liked it, you would talk about it. Post reviews to forums, to Amazon, to blogs. Well, I got picked, I read the book, and whether or not I liked it, I knew I would blog about it. It was the least I could do for a free book, I figured.

The promotion was for a Marjorie M. Liu novel, Soul Song. It’s the sixth book in the Dirk & Steele series. I came into this book having never read a previous book in this series, nor any of Liu’s previous novels. It is a paranormal romance, and not one I would have picked up in the bookstore, had I seen it on the shelf. Getting an ARC was a great way to try out a book I normally wouldn’t want to spend my money on. I now have an urge to look up Liu’s backlist, and gorge myself on her paranormal.
(more…)

1. Advanced Reading Copy[back]

Sometime in the near future, I won’t be nearly as perfect as I profess to be. On a related note, it turns out that I won’t be getting the dresser that I so desperately wanted for my birthday.

I went to see my dentist yesterday–my new dentist, who I like much more than my old dentist. I’m glad he bought the other’s practice out. The dentist’s office is very technology-friendly these days. I had to get x-rays done, and instead of waiting for the film to develop, they pop up automatically on the computer monior that the patient sees.

I was slightly impressed. And secretly wanted to ask the hygienist if he’d email me the x-rays, though I held back.

Anyway, after we get through all the normal dentist stuff, the hygienist did a periodontal check. For all my healthy strong teeth, I’m at a high risk for developing a periodontal disease, gingivitis being the most likely. Because of my wisdom teeth.

Unlike many adults my age, not only do I have all four wisdom teeth, but all four are unerrupted–meaning that they’re still beneath the gumline. But they’re there. Four full sized adult teeth, pushing into my already crowded mouth. On the x-rays, they are visably pushing into the other teeth, to the point that you can see the one next door being pushed sideways because the wisdom teeth want in.

While they don’t hurt, they do ache occasionally. And if I don’t get them removed, they’ll crowd the other already crowded teeth (I do need braces too), making it even harder to keep them clean an healthy. Leading to… gross mouth diseases.

My dentist said I don’t have to get them pulled right away, but I should do it before I turn 30–before my body is too old to heal the kind of damage that can occur. And unfortunately, I only have insurance until September, slightly pushing up my timeline.

So, I have a few calls to make this afternoon. I need to find an oral surgeon. I need to find out how much my insurance will covers getting my teeth pulled.

Since I most likely will not be able to afford to cover the difference between what it costs and what my insurance covers, for my birthday, my parent’s will probably gift me with the gift of less teeth.

And I really wanted a new dresser.

– “Crooked Teeth,” Plans: Deathcab for Cutie

I find myself lately withdrawing more and more from the social aspects of the web these days.

Lately, I’ll visit a site, and something I read will prompt me to the point of nearly leaving a comment when I think to myself “I don’t really want to come back and participate in this dialog.” Which causes me to wander off before I can type anything out.

Perhaps it’s a side-effect of my brain dropping off the grid for the summer, but I don’t feel like arguing with people these days. And it seems often that if you disagree with someone, that it’s going to end in an argument. Not all the time, I know, but often. Unfortunately, most of the places where I find that I nearly leave a comment is somewhere where I either disagree with the author, or disagree with something that has been said in a comment. I’m tired of arguing my opinions¹, and so just don’t bother leaving them out in the open where they must be defended.

I miss the time before web 2.0, when clickthru commenting was the norm. You would read a post, leave a comment, and never think about it again. If the blog author had something to say in response, they’d email it to you, but you were under no obligation to reply. I understand how the blog scene evolved to what we see today, with inline comment responses, but I’m not a fan of the expectation that the commenter must come back and respond to a response to what they had said. Mostly because I don’t want to come back.

I realize that this is entirely a personal problem. That others—many others—have no problem with the back and forth of comment discussion. It’s just an old hang-up from an old internet. I know there are ways to get around it, with coComment, co.mment, and commentful²; ways for me to upgrade my own site and allow my visitors easier access to ongoing conversation. But I’ve been a stick in the mud for so long that I almost sort of like the view from here.

My social internet experience is a bit slower, a bit more thought out. If I leave a comment, I’ve really thought about what I was going to say. Because it takes a lot for me to actually type something in that comment box, let alone submit.

If I’ve left you a comment in the last two months, you should feel the love. It’s rare indeed for me to put my words on someone else’s blog. It means I love you terribly.

– “Season,” Almost Here: The Academy Is…

1. Not just on the web. Pretty much anywhere. I find myself avoiding topics of conversation if I know that the person I’m talking to has a different opinon than me. Most likely a side-effect of this summer’s brain-dead status.[back]
2. Maybe one day I’ll test all the comment trackers. Or just read a review of them. Or just pretend they don’t exist. Hard to say.[back]

Last week, I bid on an eBay auction for the first time in over a year. Two days later, the auction was canceled due to an error in the listing.
I have never been so happy about a canceled auction in my life.

I had bid on a used bicycle. I’m going to need one come August—Chico is a biking town, much like Davis, and I don’t own a car. I don’t know what possessed me to bid on a bike, but I blame Make. Minutes before my random searching on eBay, I had watched Bre build a single speed bike in a video podcast that left much to my imagination.

Granted, I did not want to build a single speed bike—I only wanted to own one. The best I can do is fill bike tires with air, so building a bike is really out of the question. But the idea of a single speed bike intrigues me. I haven’t ridden a single speed since I was eleven, and I got a mountain bike for Christmas.

By the way—I don’t actually know how to ride a mountain bike. Or a ten speed. Or pretty much anything with gears. No one ever taught me how which gear to ride on and how to fix them when they break. And my bike never shifted gears correctly, so I never bothered. So, while I can ride a bike, I’m sure real bikers would point out that I’m not riding it correctly.

After getting high from Bre’s excitement, I trolled eBay for bikes, and found one on a four day auction that was at a starting bid of $0.95. I thought to myself “I can afford that.” I even convinced myself that the $80 for shipping wasn’t too much. I placed a max bid of $20, and figured that $100 wasn’t a bad investment on a single speed bike that was guaranteed to work. Except that it didn’t come with petals. But I could deal with that.

Three hours later, though, as I was walking home from the bus stop, I started to have second thoughts. Really? Getting a bike shipped in from Houston was a good plan? Surely I could scour yardsales for a cheap bike before I left for Chico.

So, I didn’t want to win the auction anymore. My max bid was so low that I thought I’d have nothing to worry about. Someone was going to outbid me. Bikes must sell for more than $20, even with expensive shipping. After two days, the only other bids had pushed me to my max. On the third day, I was really afraid I was going to win.

And then eBay sent me the email that made my day. The auction was canceled, and I was saved from my own idiocy. It was quite possibly the best email I had gotten all week (and please, let’s not contemplate how sad that makes my inbox).

– “The Art of Losing,” The Art of Losing: American Hi-Fi

I did finish one book this week, although I’m still working on Mason & Dixon, and two writer’s references. I also picked up more books at the bookstore. Any excuse to not read the books I already have.

1. Stardoc – S. L. Viehl

I’ve been reading Viehls’ blog for awhile now, and I thought I should finally pick up one of her books. It was one of the better Sci-fi stories I had read in awhile. Which means that I didn’t have to work too hard to understand the futuristic world she’d thrust me into, and there were only a few word choices that I questioned.

I still can’t picture the color vermillion in my head, and wish authors would stop using it.

Still a bit saddened by my lack of reading. I read a bit of Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon every morning before work, but unfortunately it’s had the side effect of putting me to sleep. I’m only about 150 pages into it, and I’ve got about 600 more to go. How long until they make it to the new world?

I did read a new edition of an old favorite, and it turns out that I really love footnotes if they’re not at the foot of the page. This edition had the original text on the left page, and the footnotes and drawings on the right. Very recommended for Austin fans.

1. The Annotated Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austin, Ed. David M. Shapard

I’m a little late to the game, but on Monday Brian tagged me with the eight random things meme. Which could mark the first meme not sent my way by Erin. But hey, at least I can send it her way this time.

It’s hard to come up with eight random things that people don’t know, but I’ll attempt it:

1. The site I’ve spent staring at the most this week is the Apple Store’s Macbook page. I am dreaming about my new laptop in August. Is it August yet?
2. When I was in high school, I wanted to change my name to Sara–even though it was my best friend’s, my mom’s, and my sister’s name. But I would have added an H.
3. I’m a huge flirt, but I’m very shy. Thank god for IRC.
4. My aunt and uncle are visting from New Jersey, and I couldn’t name their kids if there was a million dollars on the line.
5. The only thing I’ve never procrastinated on is getting accepted to Chico State. That’s how badly I wanted it.
6. My only artistic talent is to string words together. Most of the time, even that isn’t artistic.
7. I used to be everybody’s favorite anything in our family. Turns out I’m really good at sucking up for cash.
8. I write more in my head than I ever get down on paper.

Sigh. That was rather hard to get through, eight random things about me. I thought about tagging a bunch of people, but perhaps not everyone likes memes anymore? I’m just going to tag Erin, then, since turnabout is fair play.

Sadly, I didn’t actually finish any books this week. I felt I needed a break from all the Romances, and I had the misfortune of attempting Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. Which, also sadly, exhausted me to the point that I fell asleep. Between it and Ulysses by James Joyce, I’ve never had to work so hard at understanding what a novel is trying to tell me. I was so exhausted by the book that I didn’t even notice I had left it at work over the weekend.

I did get to go to the bookstore this weekend, and picked up four new books–well, three new books and an old favorite. I just can’t turn down Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, and I picked up an annotated version that I am enjoying immensely. The other three books were all from different genres, and one is non-fiction, so I have a bit of a varied reading list heading into the summer.

I spent yesterday in Chico, going through the transfer student orientation that Chico State puts on. The only reason I went, really, was because at the end of the day, we were able to register for classes.

It was rather boring, really. I got there at 8am to check in, get my ID photo taken, and purchase the  Course Catalog¹ which was a shocking $16. Which just seems slightly like overkill, since Sac City’s Course Catalog was only $4. At least I won’t have to buy another one, if I don’t loose it.

It was only transfer students yesterday, and after the introduction and welcome to orientation, we broke up into groups. I was with all the English majors, and the first thing we did was take a tour of the school. Where I didn’t take any photos, even though my camera was in my bag. I didn’t take any photos yesterday at all, even though I should have.

Our Peer Adviser–and tour guide–was named Morgan, and she was also an English major with an option in Education. An option is a further course of study in a certain direction, and a lot of students pick one, since your strict major requirements don’t give you enough units, and so you have elective credits to fill up.

Anyway, she was really nice, and had an amazing ability to walk backwards without running into things. She walked backwards the entire time, except up and down stairs. If she had done that, she would have been a god to us. As is was, we were pretty impressed.

After the tour, we spent an hour or so in a class room before lunch, going over the general ed. requirements to be sure we didn’t have to take any lower division courses this year. Finally, a reason for why I took Marine Biology–I don’t have to take any science classes at Chico State. We also talked about school rules and random other stuff in the catalog.

After lunch, we met with a Faculty Adviser, who explained which classes we needed for our degrees, how to pick an option, and which classes need to be taken first.

I don’t have an option–not really.  Instead, as I get my degree in English, I’ll also be getting a certificate in literary editing and publishing, which fills the same unit requirements as an option.

Have I lost anyone yet? After the meeting with the Faculty Adviser, I finally got to register for classes, at around 3pm. It took me about 45 minutes to pick my classes, and I’m not thrilled that I can only register for five right now. There’s a sixth class I want to take, but I’ve already got 16 units, and they won’t let anyone sign up for more than 17 until after July, so I’ll have to hope that class still has spots available when I can add more classes. Then again, I might just stick with my five. It is two more than I had last semester.

That’s it for school info for the rest of the month. I’m going back up to Chico in July with ME for her orientation. I’ll probably paint the bathroom while she’s busy being bored. And I might go and take some photos.

But, now I’m even more excited about next year, and can’t wait for it to be August.

– “Don’t Wait,” Dusk and Summer: Dashboard Confessional

1. It’s the large catalog that universities put out, listing all the classes they can possibly offer, and the classes needed for each and every degree the university hands out. If you didn’t know[back]