commotiocordis

My allergies have been kicking my butt lately. They’ve been bad for a week or two now, but mostly in the headache plus scratchy throat accompanied by the occasional sneezing bout and uncontrollable runny nose kind of way. Which, now that I list it all, sounds like a lot, but still. And then my chest was kinda tickly all last night, like I had to cough. Woke up this morning with full-out massive chest congestiony symptoms. Not the goodish kind where you can actually cough and make yourself feel better by getting something out—it doesn’t feel like I’m actually clogged up at all, I just have the cough tickle and the sort of labored breathing, you know?

Fail, I say. I was afraid this morning that it was because I was getting sick and not just allergies, but as it hasn’t really gotten worse throughout the day, I’m assuming not. Which is good, because I’m tripping down to Columbia (‘bout 2 hours away) on a bus with the fakey!minimed people for another leg (the last one, thankfully) of the program.

Which should be interesting. It’s all day Sunday and Monday morning. Which doesn’t make me happy in itself, because I’m only going because a) it’s free and b) we’re shadowing doctory people on Monday, but the doctoryshadowing is only a few hours. The longest part (the Sunday bits) are almost all going to be me vs. the idiots (I’m sorry that sounds pretentious and snotty and horribly bitchtastic, but they’re so dumb) on some fictional case study they’ve got going on.

That, and the schedule is really weird. Meaning I’m worried about my nutso sleeping and the food stuff. I’m afraid that every meal is going to be shitty and unhealthy and pizza and such (at least one of them is pizza, another is something else in a food court-esque place, etc.) not to mention provided at times where I’m not at all hungry, and I’m going to end up not being able to eat all weekend. I planned on bringing some soup and veggies and other healthy food type things along, since the hotel we’re in has both a microwave and a fridge in every room (it’s freaking swank—we’re talking more than $100 a night standard rates for this place) but it turns out we’re only going to actually get to the hotel for the first time after 9:30pm on Sunday and leave again (presumably not to return) really early on Monday to go do more stuff. Which restricts what I can bring along with me, because that means we’re probably leaving our clothes and stuff on the bus while we do most of the stuff, meaning I’d have to lug whatever food I wanted to bring for the day on Sunday around with me. Along with whatever food they provide that I decide to stash in my bag for later rationing/sharing/saving until I’m hungry—necessary because I’ve been eating my biggest/highest caloric meal around 2am lately because I’m fail like that, and when I screw with my system too drastically I get migraines, which would really manage to ruin the weekend in a lickedysplit type manner.

But yes. Yay for that in a not-so-much-yay type of way. The shadowing will hopefully make up for it, providing I got matched with somebody in the emergency department. If I’m chasing around somebody from the path lab, I’m going to be pissed. Because I have to call my boss today (I’ve been putting it off because I feel bad because I know I’m really leaving him in the lurch) and tell him that sorry, I can’t work on Sunday night because I’m going to be out of town, and since I don’t have anybody who can cover for me . . . sosorry. I want him to just call the coaches of the volleyball teams and ask them if we can cancel Sunday and tack another day on the schedule at the end, because that way I still get paid, but idk if that’ll happen. He’ll prolly either get one of his daughters to sit up there and just keep score (since I’m pretty sure none of them can ref) or try to do it himself. Still. Prefer, I would, the money.

Got free tickets from school to a baseball game for Tuesday evening, which might be nice. I’m not interested in baseball, really, but just going out to the thing is most of the fun. It’s for the Character Council (promoting character education, blah, blah) thing I’ve been sort of taking the lead on this year. Which I’ve been really enjoying, actually. I’ve developed a quite nice relationship with one of the administrators (Mr. S.) that is in charge of the program because of it—he really recognizes both the work I’ve been doing and that I’ve got interest in doing it and has been seeking me out for other leadershippy things, both related and not, which makes me rather proud. Plus, he’s just a pretty awesome guy all around—I was in his office yesterday on a conference call to give feedback on a panel/conference on cyber bullying that I went to back in October through the Council, and afterwards we were talking about everything from school policy on things to his personal history; he reminds me a bit of my dad—managed to turn things around from a poor family where nobody went to college and barely graduating high school (him)/having to drop out of college to work (my dad) to having several degrees and working in education and co-owning a swanktastic French restaurant (this is where my dad diverges, because unfortunately, this is not a possession of ours, LOL) and such. And we (there was another girl in there for the feedbacking too; actually the daughter of my theatre teacher of previous years, point of interest) were talking about religious stereotypes—she’s Southern Baptist, which people hear and go “OMG, conservative”, as with my Catholicism; Mr. S.’s grandparents were Orthodox Jews but were unexpectedly really cool with him marrying a Gentile, etc. And he bought us sodas afterwards, which was the cementer him into the winnage column.

But Character Council leadershippyness continues, as we’ve got some kind of national character award evaluator people coming in week after next and I’ve been fingered to be one of the two smarmy, lead them around type people, which is a big deal because most of their information about us and what we do is thus going to end up coming from me and my choices of places to take them to see “character in action”. Kinda high-pressure when I think about it. Which is why I’ve been choosing not to as of yet.; Mr. S.’s going to take me through a bit of what they want to hear, what it’s going to be like, that kind of thing on Thursday, methinks--after we have the discussion period on Wednesday that we’re going to part-reproduce/part-critique when the guys come the week after. The day the national people are coming is the day of the all-day Special Olympics thing that I’ve done for the past couple of years, though, which makes me sad, because I really like doing that and I’m going to have to miss it. I don’t think I got to do it last year either because of some big test I had that day, so doublesuckage.

Indeed. I’ll be leaving for home in a few minutes, then it’s callage of the volleyball boss, then to Shop N’ Save to return the nectarine that they shafted me on; $1.07 for one piece of fruit, which is frakking outrageous in the first place, but then it was totally worthless because it had been frozen and had that nasty, ex-frozen, mealy texture—no way I wasn’t taking that back. When I went by last night, though, the lady couldn’t give me my money back because it was after the hours that the customer service/cashbox desk was open and policy was to not give any cash back then (why she couldn’t slip me a freaking dollar out of the register, idk) and they didn’t have any new nectarines to swap it with (not that I’d really want to anyway—when one’s frozen, chances are the whole batch has been exposed to the same conditions). Should be a new batch today, she said in between being bitchtastic (it’s always the same lady when I go there after going to the gym, and she’s always got this huffy, exasperated attitude that really pisses me off), so I might just swap the fruit out, but idk if I want to chance having to do the whole thing again if this one’s bad too.

I really want to write West Wing Donna/Helen Santos fic. They're all coy and hesitant and flirty and cute in the 7th season.

That's my story.

Didn't go to the roller derby, as it turned out that only like 2 of us could go that day. We're looking at one of the later bouts (there are two more this season) instead.

Thought I had a dentist appointment on Sunday (yeah, I know. What kind of appointment is on Sunday? I know that the 9th is what she told me, and I know that she said I had to go twice in 3 days, so unless we switched to talking about October without her telling me, idk what happened). This was not the case, I found, after driving all the way down there.

Volleyball started up again, so at least I've got a bit of money coming in. The coordinator guy is bringing his daughter into it, though, so I'm back up on the ref stand, unfortunately. I liked doing the ref+score thing, because I could hide behind the score board controls at the table and SIT DOWN (which is a big thing as it's still 90 degrees and about ten million percent humidity at 6pm). Now I have to actually make all the hand signals and such look good, lol, instead of just waving quickly before updating the score. (And the pain! I'm already anticipating the pain!)

He's still going to pay me the same, though, which is good. Because before, my big paycheck doubling was because I had doubled up my duties by taking on the scoreboard and record stuff as well as the reffing. Now that his daughter's taking over the score, I was afraid that I'd get bumped back down (and def. have to get another job).

Today? Not a bad day. I actually scrounged up a bunch of courage and told the guy that pays me at volleyball that I want paid double when I'm the only one working. Which was quite often last session (though I don't expect him to pay me for those) and looks to be every time this session. So yeah, it's looking like I'm making $20 an hour now. Sweet. Go me. I was proud that I actually did it.

And I was making bread to give to Amanda as a Christmas present (because this is the first time I've been unsick to make food since the week before Christmas) and I made it all up before I left and let it rise while I was working and came back and baked it. And I broke a bit off before baking and threw that in there along with the main bread (in this special little tube thing I found that makes like frenchy loaved bread, all with the long skinnyness) so I could taste it and not give it to her if it sucked, but I just got it out and ate some of the little broken off bit, and it's actually really good. Score two for me.

Had a lot of stuff I was supposed to do over the weekend and didn't, so this week is going to be hell. But I'm not going to think about that.

My lips have been splitting like nobody's business these past few days. Grr. Tis annoying. And painful.

Edit: Hee, except for that mood icony bit looks like she's sick, not like she's saying yum, bread. So we'll swap that.

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.

When Cameron goes "'Cause I'm hitting that. And it's totally hot," I just noticed that Chase looks to Foreman like "Is she kidding?" Like he seriously wasn't sure. Which naturally leads to the conclusion that Chase either knows that she's got a thing for the ladies or wouldn't put it past her.

Read some good stuff Thursday night while I wasn't doing anything I should have been doing. Pornish Angel/Spike, mostly. One from the ancient and all historical Angelus/William the Bloody time (I'm not up on my Buffyverse lingo; I'm not sure if it has a specific name.) that was cool.

Read some really great fics tonight, too. One of which being this West Wing CJ/Carol one, "Playing with Matches".

I might have a Mock Trial meeting tomorrow, but I don't know as I missed the first meeting (I really hope the teacher/coach lady will still let me in). I'm going to have to wake up early and try to call someone and find out if it's this week. And I really want to go see Shakespeare's R & J at some point this weekend (meaning Saturday, as the Sunday matinee won't be over until after I need to leave for volleyball and I won't be done with volleyball until the night show's already started) so I've got to figure that out, as Sunday night's the last show.

Managed to do that almost-passing-out thingie while reffing tonight. Once I could have written off as a fluke, I locked my knees or whatever, but twice in 6 weeks for no apparent reason is a little freaky.

Got to play in the first game, though, as they were short. Was fun. I didn't do overly well at first, but had like 8 serves in a row at one point (which isn't anywhere near my record, but for not having done it in more than a year. . .). My knees hurt, however, as I didn't have my kneepads and yet I insist on diving for the ball.

Yay, lasagna for dinner. Yum.

Edit: *drops lasagna on pants* Oops.