commotiocordis

Maybe you heard about this Kirkwood shooting last night.

Yeah. Thanks for waking me up, sirs, as every police truck and news helicopter sped past my house on the way there (as that's the division of the county I'm right on the border of). That was annoying. There comes a point where adding more police there will only cause more of a problem, wouldn't you say? I was joking at one point that it was all probably just a rumor (because the news was all "OMGWTF, but unconfirmed") set by somebody in the next city so they could go rob banks while every cop in Missouri was hanging around down there.

Watched Juno last night. Wasn't overly impressed. It was decent, but I don't think I'd pay to see it again or anything.

Took a shower in the middle of watching Juno (I was watching it at home, obviously). Because I had to go to the bathroom when I was about halfway through, and figured why bother having to go back there twice. And since my bathtub is a failure at draining the water from the shower, I was like "Well, why not just turn it into a bath" because I've been feeling shitty lately and baths are amazing for that kind of thing. And it was uber relaxing and great. Until I fell asleep, LOL. Several times. This didn't stop the relaxage in itself, but I finally had to get out when my head rolled to the side, putting my face partially into the water and I woke myself up by snorting up bathwater. That's my story of the night.

But updates on the last (or second to last? I don't remember) whiny rantage. Jackass teacher who I thought was going to stop me from getting the academic award again? Nope. Got my invitation to the award breakfast today. Which is good, because the t-shirts they're giving out this year are actually pretty cool, though idk if I can get one since they were given out last semester, but I wanted to be able to try. Plus, test for said jackass teacher? Managed to pull out not just an A, but a 100%. Which is win. Plus, big English paper that was due today is now due Monday (hence my being even semi-coherent at this hour--or even typing this at all, as I'd probably be still finishing it). Glands are still painfully swollen, though, which is confusing and not win, nor is sudden and drastic weight gain that I'm blaming on sleeping through the gym hours night before last (because, erm, I actually ate a lot less to make up for said non-gym going, so there's really no excuse). Still. Today should be good.

It is hard to type the notes for this presentation that I should have written weeks ago when my keyboard is being a whore. The 's' and spacebar are being the worst, and it's really quite frustrating, because I've got to pry up the spacebar every time I want to hit space again, and that's only if it hasn't stayed spacing the entire time. Which happens.

Gah.

I'm pretty sure it's my fault, too, from when I knocked my water cup over on it the other day. Which makes it worse. I already pried up both keys in question and tried to clean out some of the dog hair and smeg underneath, which helped for a while, but it went right back to sticking.

And I made the mistake of telling my bio teacher that I could make up the test 1st hour today (instead of 7th), which means I don't have my normal first open period to get all my notes in order.

I have the feeling that most of this presentation is going to be done extemporaneously.

So. Wednesday? Fail.

I guess I've got to start out with the night before, which I spent staying up way later than I should have considering I had a cold, only half a root in one of my teeth, massive drugs pumped into me to keep me from noticing that I only had half a root in one of my teeth, etc. I had biology, and I thought I had english (turns out it wasn't due until today, though), and I had to write this campaign speech/essay thing for my econ class's representative to the marketing club spot (a short one, but I have heaps of trouble writing things that are self-promoting already so it actually took me the longest, added to by the fact that I was on pain killers). I finally finished everything but the english, realized it wasn't due until Thursday, and went to bed. Around 2:30 or so, I guess.

I'm still in pain from this whole root canal escapade, so in the morning, I took one of the vicodin that the dentist prescribed. A whole one again this time (I took a whole to get me through the night, but before I was doing halfs every three hours).

After a little while? ('Bout half way through first hour, I'd guess.) Started noticing it. Like, in a "Oh, I think this means that I'm high" way. While I was trying to get some work done. Not very conducive to that. Twas also when I realized that for the second chapter in a row, I'd forgotten one of the huge biology assignments at home. Which is a huge point dock that I can't afford.

2, 2.5 hours after taking it (and right in the middle of Spanish class) I started getting both v. v. hot and nauseous. So I'm sitting there, trying to get my mind to cut through the nausea long enough to come up with the answer to whatever he's asking (because he hadn't called on me in a while, which meant that I was coming up) plus possibly how to ask if I could go to the bathroom/nurse (both easy when I'm not high/sick, but when I am, almost impossible), all while breathing like I'm back on the nitrous to try and quash the nausea.

Next class, english: the hotness hadn't gone away but the nausea had gone down a bit. I get called down to the office for them to ask me if I'd done my make up hours for last year yet. Erm, yeah. In fact, I turned them in the second day of school. I was in fact complemented by the principal for being the first person to turn them in this year. Not only that, but they'd called me down at least twice before so far this year to ask the same question (and caught me and asked when I was in another office working on getting a parking pass). My answer has always been yes, guys. If you lost the papers, let me know and I can get a new set. (I handed them right to you while you were sitting at the computer you could enter them into, but whatever.) Because I'm hanging out in a teacher's room when I'm not scheduled to be on campus, I'm actually working two of them off a day. Considering I only had four to make up to begin with, I've actually got a surplus of about 30 hours or so. So I'd appreciate if you would quit disturbing me, because it's pissing all my teachers off. A bit later, I (and a bunch of other people this time, but still) get called down from the same class for pictures for this award thing. One of the worst days to take pictures of me, I'd think, as if I felt anything like I looked, it was pretty bad. Though TCAB gave me this look/smile thing that made the elementary school girl-esque part of me blush trufax hard and the more adult side spend the entire walk back to class analyzing it.

And then right about noon, the vicodin had completely worn off. *headdesk* A mate offered me half of her peanut butter sandwich, and I forgot and bit it with my left side, and I think my head practically exploded.

12:40 or so, I take some of the acetaminophen (I had re-stolen from my siblings) before economics. Which then sucked. Not only did it turn out I made a bunch of stupid mistakes on the exam the day before by not reading the questions (it asks "which one isn't", and I mark the first one that is without reading the rest of the choices, stuff like that), but the whole class representative thing (that I signed up for only because I figured it'd look good on the resume, but still) was being postponed. The teacher said she didn't remember announcing to the class that you needed to write said essay and get it to her before 7:30 (even though she did announce it) after the other girl that had declared her intention to run for the spot spent the first 10 minutes of class arguing with the teacher about how she didn't "understand why you'd need to tell people why they should vote for you, why can't they just vote?" and about how "1/2 page is so long for something they don't even need!"

And this other girl? The popular whorish type. Basically, my only chance was for her not to actually turn in the essay (which she didn't), but instead of my just automatically winning (like happened with the secretary and social chair positions), the teacher decided they had another day to turn them in. So, since she's giving us the extra day, what if I decided that I wanted to run for secretary? No, those didn't get pushed back because. . . I don't fucking know. I told the teacher that that was bloody unfair, and she tried to justify it (saying that she didn't think she'd announced it, Katie and I told her she did, she said oh well), and then actually managed to track me down to my next class and call me in there (I have no idea how she did it, as I'm not even supposed to be on campus then, but I hang out in one teacher's room anyway so I can take the bus home, which is not on my schedule) to try and "justify" herself some more. I don't even know what exactly she said (though I know it was more of the same and nothing she didn't mention in class), because I was pissed off and in pain and stressed out and damn near tears because of everything.

So yes. Then I just hung out on the computer until the end of the day, working on application stuff, and then I had to go practice with quartet (and sucked, because I hadn't rosined my bow in like evar and didn't think about it to borrow somebody else's because I used to use such strong rosin that I didn't need to more than every few weeks). And then had to leave that early for this conference call because I was on the grant reviewing panel for this Youth Service America organization.

And so I was running around, trying to find a telephone that's not somewhere where siblings will be loud and that actually works (ruling out like all of them), and I finally gave up and got ready to use the main one and just hope nobody decides to turn up the TV when I ran my tongue over my tooth again and decided "Huh. Maybe I should figure out why that feels weird all of a sudden." *looks in the mirror* ZOMGWTF. "MOM, WE'VE GOT TO GO TO THE DENTIST NOW!" The temp filling they gave me? Gone. (Once dad explained to me what it really was, how they expected that to stay for a month until my next appointment baffled my mind. I mean, it's the same stuff marketed in drugstores to fix things until you can get to an emergency dentist appointment, meaning maybe a day at the most.) There's just a gigantic hole in the middle of that tooth.

So I call the dentist, and it's about 5:15 and they're about to close. The nice tech lady from the day before got put on the line (she actually remembered me, which made me feel special, though it was prolly because I was something like the youngest patient to get a root canal evar), and I explained what was wrong, and she was all "When do you go to school?" and I told her, and it was too early to get me in the next day, but since it had to be done, she's all "Do you think you can get here in the next 10 minutes?" And I did (she actually recognized me right when I walked through the door, which made me smile), and everybody else was packing up and leaving, but she stayed and scraped all the old fakeyfilling out (makes me think she's perhaps more of a nurse type than a tech, but idk how the dentistry chain of command works) and put in new stuff (the real kind this time, so it should actually stay, though they'll have to drill it out in October). PLUS SHE ACTUALLY ANSWERED MY QUESTIONS AGAIN, SO I HEREBY APPOINT HER DENTIST AND TELL THE OTHER PEOPLE TO GO AWAY. Another tech/nurse/whatever lady stayed and helped her too, which was nice. And then I didn't have to pay anything (which surprised me, because medicalish places always try to tack on as much stuff as they can--I remember last time my mum was in to have a baby it was all "Adhesive bandage. $7. Pain reliever. $14." for a band-aid and a couple of Tylenol, respectively). I totally missed the panel call, though, which I feel horrid about. I was the only person on the panel that didn't actually work for the organization, and I was pretty excited about doing it.

I got home around 6, and by this time the cold that I'd thought I'd gotten over (that's been coming back and going away repeatedly over the last few days) was back in full swing, plus I'd only gotten a couple hours of sleep the night before, so I went to take a nap. Woke up when I had set my alarm for, around 10:30 so I could get my dad's help on this Shakespeare thing I had to do for english, felt even worse (fever was back), and so decided to just go back to sleep when I still could (you know how you have that grace period sometimes for a few minutes after you wake up and you know that you won't be able to go to sleep if you don't right then?). Woke up this morning in tooth pain plus sore throat/headache/runny nose/the works and, randomly, a stomach ache (prolly from the cold, though, and drainage or whatnot), having had nothing done the night before and the prospect of facing all the crap today, and so decided to stay home.

And that's my story. /lol.

Question. If I've got to type up this journal thing of my responses to stuff we've done in theatre class, is it good to use the exact phrasing I used in the journal if the typed up version's getting sent off to some international place to be graded? The phrase I'm questioning is "drunken teenage frat-boy contingent". Not sure if I want to change that or not. Leaning towards not.

Every once in a while I get this whiff of what smells like pig preservative from the fetal pig dissection we've been doing in bio while I'm sitting here on the couch. Kinda grossing me out, because it's not coming from my hands, which means that I probably got something on either my shirt or my hair. And I'm thinking hair, because there was a strand of it I was noticing in Spanish that looked all odd and dirty when it shouldn't have. But when I actually try to smell for it, I can't find it. Gross.

So. I'm really stressing about this mock trial thing tomorrow today. Because I don't have my stuff memorized. And I really need to, because evidently I got docked big time for using notes first round. Umm, it's specifically in the rules that you can't dock for using notes, but they do it anyway, which pisses me off.

School is probably more stressing right now. I'm behind in everything, but the quarter ends Friday, so all the time that I thought I had to gather courage and ask teachers to be able to make up work is gone. And even if they agreed to let me, between mock trial Tuesday and Thursday, preparing for it tonight and Wednesday, I have no evenings to do this work. My report card's going to suck, I'm not going to be able to bring my grades up for semester at all, and I'm going to be right back where I used to be, with straight Bs and prolly a couple of Cs at the rate I'm going. It's totally different from previous years, though, because back then it was more "Oh, I do just what I need to to get by", but now I can't force myself to work. At all. I stress and get sick whenever I think about it, so I don't work, trying to avoid said stress, but really just cause more by not doing the work. I've said this all a thousand times, but it's never helped me.

Mock trial coach lady yelled at us on Sunday for bitching about the team combination thing. I was going to defend myself (because she made it seem like we were defaming the personal qualities of the people on the team while that was not the case; we simply discussed how their skill wasn't up to par and mainly how we disagreed with the policy. With the skill bit, it's the same way that you would say "Yeah, so and so's not good at math, really.") and explain that we're simply in disagreement with her decision to select the team in that manner, but the group she was bitching at was comprised halfly of people who weren't involved at all, so were I to start talking back, it would drag them into it and I didn't want to do that. She wants me to wear this suit jacket thing of hers, though, which is pretty much too small. I'm like "Okay, but I can't so much button it as not." She's like "Yeah, that's fine". I'm not crazy about it, honestly, I'm a fan of my mostly unbuttoned red long sleeved dress shirt and low cut black tanktop underneath when we're going against co-ed and guys' schools. Kidding, but it's more comfortable than trying to smush a tight jacket on top of that.
Speaking of, I've got to go find my pants. They were in the bathroom for a while, but I finally threw them down the laundry chute a few days ago. So they're in the laundry room in the basement somewhere. Which means that they're undoubtedly wrinkly (even though these pants are really good at staying unwrinkled, there's only so much they can take) so I'll have to get up early and iron them. Grr. Though not, I guess, because I'm pretty sure I'm going home before trial like I usually do (for just an hour or so, but I can't stand being away from home for 16 hours like that without time to sit down and relax).

English journal conferences this week. Realized I haven't been doing my journal at all this quarter. I have maybe four pages of it. Shit. And my grade is hugely riding on this thing. I heard one girl had one zero and it brought her down to a 79%. My one zero in that class is for a huge thing. I've got to be practically failing.

Spanish test tomorrow also. Same with bio. Both grades also riding on these tests. Got a 73% on the last Spanish test (I, along with more than half the class, got one entire conjugation section wrong for some reason) and I never do well on the vocab quizzes, so I doubt I've got higher than a B- in there at the moment. Bio is easy, but I don't know this stuff that well (as he really didn't teach it, grr) and it's all diagrams and such to draw and essays. Multiple choice I can get, because those tend to be easy, but I have to diagram from scratch a bunch of stuff. Grr.

Started a book Sunday evening, finished it this afternoon: Trial by Journal by Kate Klise. It's a kids' book, really, but I thought it was entertaining. It's a quick read, something to do while you're lounging around and want to do something easy but fun for two hours. Twas cute. I had started going back through and rereading the Everworld books, but I can't find my copy of book 3, so I stopped until I can locate it (I'm not one for reading out of order when I've not read the books for several years) and my sister really loves the Klises' books, and this was lying around, so I picked it up.

So. I'm going to finish this fic I'm reading and then go to bed. Because yay, sleep. I've been doing that a lot lately. Ish. I'm waking up every 2 hours or so, more and more frequently as it gets closer to morning. I'm falling asleep for 15 minutes and then waking up as it nears 6:30. So I'm having to sleep for longer periods to counter the fact that I'm not getting good sleep. I've given up on the whole stay up to do work thing. I don't do the work anyway, so why the hell am I staying up? It's odd, though, if I go to bed at 10ish and get up at 6ish (like I did Sunday night), you'd think I wouldn't always be as tired as I am. My mum makes these comments about how I spend all my time sleeping, and I'm like "But I don't--I can't sleep most of the time!" I get really defensive about it, for some reason. An odd one, I am.

So. Was making cookies. I was like "Okay, let's give people cookies for Christmas." Yeah, no. They didn't cook right. Twas my fault, though, as they said 10-12 minutes and they weren't done then, so I put them back in for another 10 minutes and they still weren't done, so instead of going short increments, I stuck them in for another 10 and then they got too dry.

And then my dad was like "Oh, you can microwave them too." And he put one in, but we have two microwaves, see (no idea why) and he put it in the newer, stronger one, so it burned really badly. As in, that was almost 10 minutes ago and I can still barely breathe even though we've got the microwave sucker fan thing going that sucks the air to the outside.

Spanish final tomorrow. Not nearly as worried about that as I think I should be. Math is what's going to kick my ass. Haven't studied for any of them, though.

Still don't know when we're leaving for Texas. Looks like Saturday morning. My grandma wanted mum to just pull me out of Friday school and go down then, but I was like "Yeah, says right here that if you miss a final and don't have a note from the appropriate medical or legal authority, you get a zero. Not happening."
Though my last two finals are bio and chemistry; I only really need to put my name on the test of the former to get an A (because I've got like a 97% and this final combined with the midterm that I got a 98% on only make up 10%, meaning that even if I don't answer anything, I've got a 92%) and the teacher of the latter said that as long as we pass the final, it really doesn't count. So they're easy. But not missable.

Been reading fics to myself lately, which makes me smile. Especially because some of the really long ones are impossible to do in one take straight through so I'm merging bits together and the program I've got to do so (Sony's Acid Express) is pretty darn cool and I feel accomplished every time I make a seamless transition thing from one clip to another. The reads aren't great because I'm doing them while lying on my stomach on my bed into my Mp3 player and usually doing them in one take unless they're over 10 minutes or I majorly screw up. Like fumble on a page turn or something. That's happened a couple of times. It's like *pause, paper crinkle* and, next page. I tend to just restart from the beginning, though.
And has anyone else ever tried to do dialogue switching back and forth from a British accent to Southern US and back all quickly? That's hard. I can do both accents relatively well on their own, but trying to also man them up (because it was Reed and Trip from Enterprise, both men) and do them quickly was majorly challenging. Didn't sound terribly accurate.
Grr at me a bunch of times screwing up and deleting the wrong file from the player. I try to delete the one that I just recorded, but it doesn't always start on the delete menu with the most recent one, sometimes it goes from the one before or from the beginning and it doesn't tell me how many tracks are on there, so I just have to guess what number I was on and I've been wrong at least twice and deleted complete, good, one-take reads.

But if anyone else has/knows of places to get good fics in recognizable fandoms on audio, I'd like to see them. I've got a couple that I really want to listen to, but I'm forcing myself to save them for the trip, and that's only a few.

So. That math test that I predicted I could get no more than a C- on? 71%. C- exactly. I'm so pissed. Because not only did she not let me study after springing the test on me with no warning (and I get these things really fast, it would have taken me two minutes and I would have remembered the formulas for 15 points worth of questions, bringing me up to an 86%) but I realized that I had one of the formulas wrong completely in my head; like I thought I had it right (though I realized that it didn't make sense, I was almost positive that was what was in my notes) but I didn't.

I took two quizzes and a test with these formulas wrong, and since I didn't get the first quiz back before I took the test or either of those back before I took the second quiz, I had no idea I was doing it wrong. Got the test back today right after I finished the second quiz (which was actually from a while ago that I didn't know I and several other people had missed) and realized that I majorly fucked them all up. I had copied all the formulas onto a different sheet of paper to get them all from different pages in my notes onto the same place, and copied that one (which was needed on somewhere from 3 to 6 different problems on each of the test and two quizzes) down wrong. And pretty much majorly wrong, as I substituted an 'X' for the 'U' and the 'U' for a '1', so I had two variables, which didn't make sense at all, but that was all I could come up with. I knew the U was the variable, but I couldn't figure out where I got the X from. That, and I hadn't studied the formulas that I knew I didn't know for the quiz because I figured she already screwed me over on the test and there was no point, as I had no idea there was going to be a quiz.

Don't you think that the point of quizzes is to figure out what you're doing wrong before the test?

So pretty much I'm now stuck with a C for semester no matter what I do.

And it's stupid stuff. I'm good at math. She docks points for stupid shit. Like missing all the points of a problem for things that other teachers would take off one or one-half for. I can figure out ways to do things when I can't remember the way we were taught to do them (or, in this teacher's case, not taught). Did that on this test, got the answer for the problem completely right, but got no credit because evidently she wanted it done a different way. I have no idea what that different way was. You know, sometimes you remember something being talked about, know you should know it, but don't remember? I didn't recognize this at all.

So yeah. I was really angry. I've got no idea what I've got in there right now, but it's probably close to a D+ because the test and quizzes are pretty much all we've got on there and the quizzes were almost completely based on those formulas.

Got an 83% on the last bio test because we were doing the same unit in chemistry and they sort of contradict each other and evidently I went too in depth with my answers. How do you go too in depth? And I didn't know we had to do anything in our lab manuals and so when he told us to put them on the table so we didn't have to carry them around, I figured that that was the reason we were putting them there, not to be graded. Got a zero on that. Still haven't handed in that history thing because I keep forgetting and even when I don't forget, I've got this craziness that I'd rather never remind the teacher that I haven't yet turned it in/made it up/whatever and take a zero than remind them for points, but have to face them when I hand it in late. Which is bad. Haven't done my math homework in a while, got a Bio test tomorrow that I've not studied for (and don't really plan to), English test tomorrow over two short stories that I don't even have copies of because I wasn't there when they handed them out, and nowhere to go at lunch because the teacher that I usually hang out with isn't going to be there. I'm getting farther and farther behind while I'm waiting for this random wave of really bad depression to pass, which is making me even more depressed.

And then I was telling this to Katie and she gave me a hug and I managed to start sobbing my arse off in her arms in the middle of theatre class because everything has just been so fucked up for me in the past months and I'm pretty much to the point where I can't take it anymore.

Yeah. That's my story.

Edit: And I think my dog is outside playing with a rat. Eww. Lovely.