commotiocordis

Looks like I've finally prodded sufficiently so we can wipe this computer. It'll prolly be a few days until I can get back on, then, as we've got to wipe it, reformat it, install Windows 98, and then upgrade it to XP (because that's the combination of CDs we could find--the actual XP disks are missing, but the 98 and XP upgrade disks are not, LOL). Yay for this, though I'm rather paranoid that I'm going to be missing something major when it's done.

So, my sister downloaded some toobar thing. And god knows whatever else that came with it. I'm going to have to start sitting behind her when she's on the internets and making sure she doesn't click on the "OOH, pretteh screen savers" or anything, because I'm veritably positive that most of our problems are coming from her. To make a long story short, we're prolly going to have to wipe the computer because the popups are every minute or so and the virus protection that comes with our DSL has been corrupted by something or another (I can't believe it took me this long to realize that the weird "directory broken" message that pops up that you just click through when the computer starts wasn't from Trillian--it mentioned Yahoo in the filename, so I just assumed--but the YahooDSL virus blocker, meaning that we've been virus-protection-less for ages now).

This doesn't really affect me, though there are games and such that I've got installed but don't have the CD for anymore that I'll end up losing the ability to play. The siblings are freaking out about losing the Sims families, though, which is stupid considering I already accidentally lost them when I tried to install Bon Voyage (god only knows why, but BV changes the file types of all your saved games to be unreadable by the original versions) only to find out that even though my video card is on their list and drivered up and all, it won't work due to some glitch in the game that EA is blaming on the card. And then somebody tried to uninstall BV but it didn't fully do so or something. . . I haven't really bothered to find out what's wrong there since I don't care all that much and it won't matter when we wipe it anyway.

Yes. So I really hope it happens, just because it'd be lovely to actually have hard drive space again and for the computer to actually go as fast as it's supposed to, but unless I do it myself, I don't know if it's going to happen at all.

O AND an epilogue.

These barbecue potato chips that I just ate? HOT. They're okay (pretty good, actually) when you're eating them, but when you're done, your throat just kinda smokes.

Anybody know why my computer--or really, Windows Media Player--is incapable of playing WAV files? This is frustrating, but it's been going on FOREVER and I can't remember what I used to use instead to make them play.

Edit: Or. . . mp3 files now? This is starting to sound suspiciously virus-like.

Oh, and the reason that Juliet rebuffed Shawn's advances on yesterday's Psych episode (2.05, Meat is Murder, but Murder is Also Murder)?

Because she's doing the chief. (Who had not nearly enough screentime, kthx.)

I mean, why else? James Roday is pretty cute.


And this icon totally didn't turn out like I wanted it to. It took me ages to get it under the 40k limit, and now you can barely see the blatant eyegrope because it's small and choppy and shorter than I wanted and rather fuzzy. That and to get it to work at all, because my frames got mixed up and I had to sort them all out again after finally figuring out that that was the problem and not that I was just doing something wrong (as I'd not realized until then that you could make animated GIFs in Photoshop).

But yes. It looks like she's looking straight at O'Hara when she does the little lean-back+eyes-narrow-and-sweep-across-her-body thing.

So. Goo Goo Dolls was last night, like I mentioned about a thousand times. Twas pretty excellent. We left a bit after 7 (the show started at 8), and I thought that'd be plenty of time to get down there, as it is generally only 20 minutes to get downtown. Erm, no. Because of the whole London terrorism scare thing, they had maybe 5 blocks on all sides of the riverfront blocked off when we went down there, and the bigger streets blocked off to 10 blocks. I seriously thought that I was going to miss it, because I got dropped off a ways away, and then didn't know where I was going. But I didn't.

I got down there right when it was starting (I couldn't find where the show was at first, because I started going to the other stage, as that was the only one I'd been to before), and it was unbelievably packed. I don't know if I'd seen that many people in one place before in my life. But the good thing about being only one person is that I managed to push my way through the left side all the way down to the front. I was maybe 15 people away from the front/center spot, and as it was, I still had a pretty decent view. (And whoever came down towards the end and stood in front of the rail and was videotaping seemed to like me because I knew all the words when they had us singing bits of "Iris", which made me smile.) Though there's a big Anheuser-Busch banner thing on each side, which blocked the left third or so of the stage, which made me angry. Still, I was close enough to see John Rzeznik start shifting to avoid one of his strings after it went out of tune in the middle of a song and it was taking them a while to grab another. If I can find some kind of picture of the stage, I'll point out where I was (and perhaps even me).

Though, unfortunately, I think it was because I was so close that my mp3 player's recording of it didn't work. You can hear it, but there's nasty crackling and such on top (it sounds like you're turning cheap speakers way louder than they're supposed to go). I'm going to try to clean it up, but I don't think it will work so much as not.

There were a bunch of songs that I didn't know, a couple being new ones, which I didn't really expect. The one thing that I didn't like was when they were doing "Iris" (which is my all-time, drop down dead favorite), they had the crowd sing for bits. Which, you know, okay, because it's probably everybody else's favorite too, but it got to be way too much. Everybody is going to sing along anyway; I'd rather you guys did most of the main vocals. I think we sang most of it, honestly, and about half way through I just got annoyed, because I just wanted to hear the damn song. (Between you and me, St. Louis is flat.)

After an encore (I was bits afraid I'd blow my throat out yelling for that one), I started heading back. And then panicked, because I'm trying to get through to home to ask my dad to pick me up, and I can barely hear once the fireworks start, and the phone doesn't appear to be working. It was a new one, because mum took the one to Vermont and dad wanted me to have one for this, and I called probably 20 times to no effect. Turns out that even though where I was, where I bought the phone, and where I was calling were all in the same area code, I still had to type it in. I was more than a little freaked, though. I finally got through maybe 30 minutes after the show ended as I was walking out (I went the direction out of the stage area where the least people were, so I got out of there more quickly, but had to walk through the entire fairgrounds to get up to the street), and found out that I was on the total opposite side of everything from where I was supposed to meet him.

So some 12 blocks later (in my sexyshorthookerboots, which started killing my feet after about 20 minutes of standing in them during the concert), I stopped where I had gotten dropped off (because there was a nice fountain you could sit on the ledge of that breezed at you and cooled you down, and lights, and lots of not-scary looking people waiting around, and two cops right across the street) for an hour and twenty minutes or so, figuring that dad would just drive the 8 blocks from where he told me to meet him (because I figured he'd meant this place and just said the wrong streets). But no, because evidently, there were three blocked off blocks between the two spots. I went over to the other spot (where there was nobody else, nowhere to sit, and not much lighting), and waited there for another long while. All in all, they didn't find me until 11:20 or so, and then he had parked another 10 blocks in a different direction so he could get down there, so we had to hike those.

And then we got home around 12. And I was dead. I hadn't eaten, so I did that and watched 40 minutes of the pilot of Psych (which is going to be my new summer show if I can find it, since Becker has gotten to the episode where Reggie leaves and thus is not worth watching anymore), and was pretty much falling asleep on the couch (because for some reason I had woken up at 6:40 that morning), so I went to bed. That's my story.

Today I mixed up some henna to play with (because I don't try to use it on my skin very much as it takes the entire package to do my hair), so I'm probably going to get to that shortly (or maybe tomorrow morning; it should be okay for that long and it'd probably be easier to keep it not smudged during the day as opposed to trying to sleep with it on) as I've been letting it sit for a while now. If it turns out well, I'll probably take pictures of it or something (if it lasts long enough for mum to get home with the camera; I had forgotten she had it. Grr).

Also bought a flat-screen monitor yesterday afternoon (mum is going to kill me when she gets home for letting him do that) and set up another computer somebody had given my dad because they couldn't get it to work (we fixed it in about 20 minutes, LOL, though it still could use a new sound card). Ran out to get a wireless internet card for it yesterday too, and ended up with one of those USB plug-in ones, which makes me happy, because now we've got one that can go in any computer. So my brother's on that one now, playing some kind of first-person shooter game he bought at Big Lots today (I bought socks. See, who do you think spent their money more wisely? The answer is me, as I split the package of 10 with my dad and made him pay for it) and making lots of noise as he. . . idk what he's doing actually, I guess yelling at the people he's shooting/are shooting him.

Just realized that I accidentally deleted my final copy of Illusion. Shit. At least I'd already posted it.

That's what I get for assuming the files are up to date in my two "Mine" fic folders. That's what I get for having two "Mine" fic folders, LOL, and then trying to get rid of one.

Must copy down from here. Should be the same.

It's really hot in my front room/kitchen right now. Urgh. As soon as you start walking back through the hallway into the back of the house, it gets a lot cooler, but out here it's miserable. Prolly because people leave the windows open at night and forget to close them in the morning out here, whereas in the back of the house, the windows never get opened. Still. Grr.

And I keep forgetting about my arms and bumping them into things, which ends up with me in pain and aloe vera all over whatever I bumped into. Grr. It's all over my shirt from when I cross my arms or whatever.

Computer is refusing to burn this DVD. Umm, stopit. It gets to within one minute of being done (after a good 2.5 hours, because for some reason it's really slow) and tells me that there's an encrypted sector. Couldn't you have told me that before I started?

Yeah. The 2.5 or so kM to the doctor's office today was not fun. Because it was snowing. And I love snow, but it was bloody freezing. My hair literally froze this morning when I was walking outside (because I was dumb and didn't take a shower at night because I fell asleep). I couldn't feel my legs by the time I got there. And then I had to wait an hour after the appointment was supposed to be (which was strange, because usually I get to go in relatively quickly there) and then the doctor, because she was running so late, got me out of there pretty quickly, which wasn't fun. She still talked to me like she always does about books and school and such, but sometimes I'll be in there for a good 45 minutes just talking, and this time it was like 10, including time to get prescriptions and such.

I was all happylike though because she said that I could take my ritalin the way I want to take it whenever I want to take it and not every day like my other dumb doctor said I had to. Because since I don't need it every day, I don't want to waste the pills and by extension, the copay for the prescription, when it's not going to help me. She compared it to an espresso--because some days you just need that little bit of help. It made me smile, because you don't often think of doctors comparing ritalin to coffee.
And she stuck me on the pill to even out my crazy hormone-related mood issues. Twas what I was expecting, but it still seems sort of weird. Because, I mean, not like I need it for any other reason. ;) I'm a bit worried about how you supposedly gain like 15 pounds when they put you on it, though. Because I can't afford that. I've been stuck at the same weight for so long that it's killing me, but I'd much rather stay here than go 15lbs higher.

So yes. It was cold and I nearly died (okay, exaggeration, but dumb drivers don't know the meaning of pedestrian right of way!), but then my dad took me to Taco Bell, which was actually good this time around. I made them leave off the spicy bits from the cheesy bean and rice burrito thing and then mixed in the extra pintos and rice (though the sign is really confusing-- it said "Pintos and Cheese or Rice" and I thought that meant pintos and cheese or pintos and rice. But no. Pintos and cheese or just rice. Sadness. But then my dad ordered both, because he's nice like that.

And! Ohyay. I'm wearing earrings. Yeah. Doesn't seem that cool, does it? But every pair of earrings I've put in my ears in the past 2 years or so have made them go all red and itchy and swollen. In literally 30 seconds after putting them in, my ears would be intolerably annoying. But dad found these somewhere (I think they're supposed to be Mardi Gras-y or something because they've got the purple/gold/green bead thing going on) and they've got the tragedy/comedy masks, one on one earring and the other on the other and he hands them to me and is like "Here you go," (I think it may have been sort of an apology for the crap between me and mom on Sunday, even though it wasn't his fault at all) and I'm all "Yay, they're pretty. . ." and I'm sort of thinking 'They're lovely, but I can't wear them,' and he then goes "They're gold, so they should work in your ears." And I was excited. At first, I put them in and it felt like my ears were going to react (one did start to for a little bit), but now I've had them in for a few hours and they're totally fine. So yay for that. And I've got this necklace thing on, it's just like black cord with little beads woven in, but it's kinda cool. So I feel special.

But not so special, as I was getting out my english paper to work on/finish it and the file corrupted. Or something. I couldn't get it to open originally, and now I can't get Word to read the file. So, erm, I'm going to have to tell the teacher that I managed to screw up the file and am going to have to write the bloody paper over again. This after it wouldn't even turn on this morning. Grr. The cold screws up computers just like it screws up my brain.

*gives up on english paper. goes to bed.*

So. Got a hard drive for christmas. Only 60gb, which is not terrific. Bigger than my first one, but I ran out of room on the first one several times and had to compress and delete stuff and I don't want to have to do that. Found one in the newspaper that has twice as much room for only $100. Which is an amazing price. I really should buy that because I'll fill up the 60 pretty fast.

But I was fooling around on ebay and I looked my dad's account up and it turns out that he paid $90 for this one that I just got. OMG. And now I feel horrible for wanting to get the bigger one because he paid way too much for that one. I mean, he didn't, actually, as that price is pretty standard (actually pretty good) for the pocket drives and the one in the paper is a sale, but I feel like my wanting to get the bigger one is telling him that what he did wasn't good enough. And I already did the same thing with the mp3 player I got--he got me a 2gig and I wanted to trade it up to an 8 gig. I ended up not, because I had wanted to because I found out it was only $30 for the extra 6gb, but it turned out that that wasn't where he had bought it from and so it was really $100 difference between the 2gb at one place and the 8 at the other. And when I first saw the sale on the new harddrive, I thought I could just return the one he got me, but since it's ebay, there's no chance of that.

So I don't know what to do. The decision is probably made up for me already, though, as I doubt that there are any of them left in the store. Though it didn't say no rainchecks, though, so I could probably still get it. So decision not made up.

He said that he'd give me $50 for it and he'd use the one I got for Christmas and I could put up the rest of the cash and go buy the new one, but I don't know why he would use it as he's got no need for it--he's got his computer at school and then his laptop and he never has anything that he needs to take from one place to another that's bigger than his 1gb flashdrive thingie--and I can't just have him shell out what would end up being $140 for this thing if he gave me the $50 and then just let it sit around.

So I'm pretty much freaking out about this because I feel every time that I'm hurting their feelings because it seems like no matter what they get me, it's not good enough or there's always a better deal just the next day that I want to trade it in for or I just don't like it or something. I mean, with the stereo on my birthday that I pretty much just let them have back and they gave to my brother for Christmas and the mp3 player that I didn't trade but talked about doing so and now this, I feel like a horrid, ungrateful bitch.

Doesn't help that I've got a shitload of work to do; my lungs are so clogged up with crap that my pulse ox drops really drastically when I lie down, and it's already pretty low, I would estimate, when I'm not lying down (which probably means that I should go to the doctor, but by the time I get an appointment, I know it won't be doing it anymore just so that I waste the money); I've been sick for literally the last 3 weeks with only maybe one completely healthy day in between sicknesses; I really don't want to have to go to school tomorrow, but I feel like it's a bad idea to use one of my so few sick days on the third day of the semester; I'm alternating between not being able to talk at all even if I try and squeaking and rasping, both of which evoke many pain responses in my throat; we're out of acetaminophen and I've hit the ibuprofen limit for the day; I can't even do my math homework (or really I can, but it will take me easily 6 times as long) because I don't have a graphing calculator anymore and I can't bring myself to buy one yet when I've got one semester of math left; and life just generally hasn't been going my way lately.

Stuff should be a little better after next Thursday, though, as our big project for science (the one that comprises the majority of the shitload of work I've got to do) is over then.

But yeah. So, power came back on late Tuesday afternoon. I mathed it, it ended up being like 120 hours without power. Twas cold. Still cold in my bedroom.

Random stuff: Couple of days ago I was talking to Katie about Star Trek pairings and I was telling her about Troi/K'ehleyr and how in the first episode that K'ehleyr was on, she was all "I'm a half-breed! *angsts*" And Troi was like "So am I. *counsel, counsel, counsel, snuggle*" Except minus the snuggling. At least, not on screen. But I said it exactly like that, and with hand motions like flashing lights sending beams of counseling for counsel and it was funny. Yeah. I guess you probably had to be there.

Everybody in school pretty much had the giggles on Friday. It was entertaining. Our entire Spanish class just was constantly laughing.

My teacher told me if I rocked the chemistry test on Friday, I could get an A for semester. I think I kicked that test's butt. Hopefully. *Is cautiously optimistic.*

Yay for last meeting of dumb republican congress. Yay, Nancy Pelosi. I'm a fan. LOL at the congresspersons only working like 104 days all year. Which is like the least working congress days in 60-someodd years. Makes me laugh. Slackers.

Quartet gig last night. Everybody forgot to tell me that this was a 3 hour gig, as I had planned to go see Urinetown for theatre class right after. Nope, couldn't. So I've got to find somebody else to work for me at volleyball tonight so I can hopefully go then.
And I'm completely and totally sick of the song "Here Comes Santa Claus". They made us vamp that over and over while the dumb Santa guy went around to each of the hundred someodd people and handed out candycanes and such. Was nearly 15 minutes. And I can play for 15 minutes with no problem, but when you're playing the same thing over and over (about 30 times, we estimated, as it was a short song), you don't get any variation of arm movement (though in trying to vary up the arm movement, I think I played that song in every shifting position possible) and not only is it killer boring, it makes you really sore. Grr for that.
And the chairs slanted backwards. Which is badbadbad. Because you're leaning extra far forward (even though you're already on the edge of the seat) to compensate and your back starts hurting really quickly.
Got paid, though, which is nice. Finally. As I didn't get paid for the last 4. Nor have I gotten paid for the last two weeks of volleyball. Grr at that also. *needs money*

First violin was rather a bitch at quartet last night.
She was like "Oh, I'm going to be on pit and so is this other kid and nobody else even has a chance because we're the best." I really wish Alyssa had been there, because she's one of the few that actually realizes that aforementioned violin is nowhere near as good as she thinks she is and we could have shared significant glances and sniggers. She's especially not very good on viola, which is the instrument she was talking about being in pit on. She just has a two thousand dollar viola, so whatever she does sounds good. She depends completely on this expensive instrument to make her sound good; she's played mine and she sounds so much worse that I do on it.
But that pissed me off because I really wanted to be on pit for Sound of Music but I knew that I never had a chance because the orchestra teacher really doesn't like me. It has nothing to do with how good she is, it has to do with the fact that she's a suck up to the director and I never joined the director's little strolling strings group.
Grr at Anne for constantly insulting me. All the time. And I don't even think she knows that she's doing it. The replacement second violin for last night's thing asked me where I got my viola, and she made some comment about probably from the trash, because it's so bad. And she's done that multiple times before.
She insults me by grabbing my viola when I was trying to tune it like I've got no idea how to tune an instrument. And then she unwound my C string and put it back on, which made the rest of my strings go out constantly for the first hour we were playing. I was like 'Thanks a lot'. And she still couldn't tune my viola in any kind of short amount of time. I had to grab it back from her so there was a chance of getting it in tune before we had to start playing. She acts like she's all superior when it comes to anything music and she can't accept that she's not.
And at the end, I mentioned something about how my mom's taken on this project of cleaning out the laundry room in the basement, and she goes "So now there'll be one room in your house that you can walk in." I'm like urm, Anne? You've been in my house, what, twice? And both of those times only for a few minutes and only into the front room. And I know for a fact that neither time was the room messy, because once was before my birthday party and I had cleaned it up that afternoon and the other time . . . it just wasn't. So, yeah. Aside from me maybe mentioning that my room is a mess, I have no idea where you got that except out of your ass so you could make fun of me in front of people.
And these just after I was really nice to her on Thursday when she was upset about getting a bad grade on that dumb english presentation. So yeah. Guess what. I'm done. She's finally pissed me off too much.

Word is not letting me paste things in it. Don't know why. It just freezes up when I try to paste things. Not always, but things from email and things from livejournal posts tend to be the ones that are all of a sudden being bitches. Not nice. I'm pasting things to Word Perfect (which I actually like better, but hasn't been working right on the computer in different ways for half a year now) and pasting them from there to Word. Annoying.

Being forced to go to church. Also tres annoying. Grr.

So. Is back from church. Was about to go to the theatre to go see that dumb musical, but then my dad reveals that he has no idea where the theatre is even though I told him what it was by. And there's no time to look up directions as I was already going to be late, so I'm down to one showing that I maybe might be able to go see. And if I had gone to this one at 2, I might not have even had to miss work. And now I definitely will, which is sad. If there even are any tickets. And there's no way that there's going to be any. Because that would be too handy. I'm going to end up not seeing this one. Not like I care. Theatre teacher told us that we would have to go see two or three plays this year. Year's not even half way done and this is number three. I don't have the money to shell out for all of these tickets. She needs to get over herself. And maybe consider teaching something once in a while. There's no teaching going on in that class. Of the two performance things we did before this big directing one, we got feedback on neither. So we've got to do this big one with no idea whether what we've been doing for other plays so far is any good. And the meddling she does in our scenes just screws us up. Of the three male characters I play in this latest performance/directing thing, the one for whom the dialogue is most manly is the one that the teacher made us turn into a female. He/she's the only one who seems even slightly male; the other two have nothing written in to even suggest that they might be of the male persuasion save who they're in love with. Grr. So we're having to change every line from father to mother and your late wife to your late husband (the latter change which completely removed the joke from the rest of that line) and the rest of it still doesn't make sense because it's so un-female.

Knees hurt. And back/neck. And the spot on my shoulder where my viola was digging my bra strap in. And the bruise/hickey on my neck. Not yay for pain.