Caustic Cupcake's Creepy Cupboard

He's at his old apartment, cleaning up a few last things. Today is the last day of his lease, and after he drops off the key in the mail slot at the office, he's coming home to me for what will hopefully be forever.

Sigh. Love.

I, meanwhile, took a nap this afternoon and just woke up at 10:30 PM, thoroughly confused and convinced that it was 10:30 AM and it was dark because of an eclipse, nuclear holocaust, or the Apocalypse.

Today I went to school with him and cut my last class for reasons that you are about to understand in a paragraph or two (or five). Because his first class starts two hours before mine, I went to see Academic Advisement and they nearly made me cry. First, I suspect that the person I spoke with was actually a secretary and not an actual flesh-and-blood acadmic advisor, so now I have to hang around the doorway waiting for her to go to the bathroom or something before I can walk back in and see a real advisor, because I don't want to offend her. I'm sure that a lot of people have problems that are simply logistical but mine are a little more complicated. See here:

1. The only class I need to graduate with my English degree is grammar. It is not offered in the fall. Who knew?! Not Cupcake.


2. I could transfer early and just come back in a year to take grammar and then graduate with an associate's, whilst getting my bachelor's on elsewhere, right? Only if I want to go to an out-of-state school, because I missed all the relevant transfer deadlines for my state by a month, assuming I still had a semester to go. Wheee!


3. I could also just transfer early and not get an associate's at all... but I'm so close, and I spent three years at this school. I met Logic Professor at this school. I want to walk in the ceremony and get that stupid slip of paper. I'm very proud of my community college education.


4. Apparently I can walk in graduation if I have less than nine credits to go, according to Secretary. "AWESOME," I said. "And how long do I have after that to take the required classes?"
   "By fall," she said. BUT IT'S NOT OFFERED IN THE FALL, SO WHAT YOU MEANT WAS NO, CUPCAKE, YOU CAN'T GRADUATE THIS SPRING. COME BACK A YEAR FROM NOW. I wish there was something bigger and more expressive than all caps for that. Hold on: BUT IT'S NOT OFFERED IN THE FALL.


5. I could stay for the fall semester, graduate with both a Language and Culture degree and a Literature, Philosophy, and Arts degree, and then transfer. But according to the secretary, I'd have to walk in the springtime a year from now anyway, because there's no graduation ceremony after the fall semester. I took a packet that has to be filled out for graduation just in case I walk this time around. As soon as I'd left the office I flipped through it and saw the line that said Are you graduating in the SPRING or FALL (circle one)? Um... what? Advisors? Anyone?

It was kind of frustrating. Well, that was fairly unhelpful, I texted LoPro. Feeling a little lost. Then I went upstairs to the cafeteria to study for the supplementary statistics test we took today, and was ambushed by some creepy older guy from my biology class. He saw me and brought his stupid, disgusting sandwich over to my table to talk about the class, then, in a moment that was all horror for me, said "Let me just finish my sandwich and then I'll go get my bag and bring it over."
"I HAVE TO GO TAKE THIS TEST," I objected, half an hour before the next set of classes was to start. And then I crashed through the second floor window to my death on the cold wet pavement below because if that's what it would take to get away from him, it would be entirely worth it.

The Emergency Backup Test went fine.

We are watching Supersize Me in Health and Wellness. Thank graf I have a two-day reprieve from having to listen to the H+W teacher talk. Factual Error is that woman's middle name.

Today there was an employee meeting at the Cool Punk Rock B4r at the time my last class would have been ending. I'd already warned the owner I might be a little late but was loathe to carry that out. So I cut my last class, and Logic Professor and I went to drop off a money order to his apartment complex's office for his broken lease fee. Then we drove to the city for the employee meeting; he got french fries and a milkshake while us employees sat around waiting for the owner to show up. When he did, he looked around and asked who was missing. Two of the eight b4rtenders were.
"We need some new b4rtenders," he said. "Because as of today they're fired." This always happens at the employee meetings. It's a damn good thing I skipped Literature.

The meeting wasn't bad, either. We talked about new promotion strategies, some of which involve recon- oh, how I love the recon- as we'll be spying on other local b4rs. I don't know how I can do this convincingly. Sitting around with a Diet Coke and a notepad might look suspicious (suspiciously fun, I say), but where would I get a Camoflage Crowd of Drinkers to accompany me?

Also, we're supposed to hit every b4r, restaurant and business on our designated block once a week to hand out free drink promotions and make sure they can't forget us. "We need to put a face on the CPRB... other than The Gang and someone getting stabbed." Speaking of which, he said, we're forbidden from gossipping about things that go wrong at the b4r- fights, people falling down the stairs or out the window, money discrepancies. It's a good thing I never do that at all.

Logic Professor just got home with the last of his things and a copy of his Move-Out Key Receipt. I'm going to go snuggle with him for a while. Yay!

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Cool Punk Rock B4r, Flat Life, Higher Education, Logic Professor, Statistics, The Imminent Zombie Apocalypse

It was crazy tonight. Now that I've kissed Logic Professor and devoured some good Russian bread, I think I can blog a little. I mean, it's four o'clock in the fucking morning and all, but I'm not doing anything tomorrow. I mean... today.

I used to have this theory, back when I was doing sound, that if something bad happened at the beginning of the night and I fixed it, I could relax. Because something always went wrong, you know? I knew it would happen sooner or later. It was unavoidable. If nothing went wrong for the first half of the night, I'd spend the second half sweating, sure that an amp would go up in flames any minute; if the amp had exploded into flames as soon as I walked in the door (maybe before it had even been plugged in) I could safely think, What the fuck else could possibly go wrong now? And I felt protected.

Almost as soon as I got to work, I had an altercation with a couple customers. After they'd ordered a couple cans of beer and realized that draft was cheaper, they went to the downstairs b4r, bought a couple pints of draft, and BROUGHT THEM BACK UPSTAIRS TO DRINK AT MY B4R WHILE REFUSING TO PAY FOR THE ALREADY OPENED CANS BECAUSE IT WASN'T FAIR THAT DRAFT IS CHEAPER.

Oh, they paid. It wasn't pretty, but they paid.

In accordance with Cupcake's First and Second Laws of Disaster (First Law: It's going to happen. Second Law: If it already happened, you're set for the rest of the day.),* the rest of my night was awesome.

It turns out that the Chinese restaurant down the street will deliver specifically to the upstairs b4r. I'm going to have to try that with the one near our apartment. We'll see if they'll deliver to me in bed so I don't have to get up.

Around midnight I mixed up a bottle of shots, climbed up on the b4r, shouted "WHO WANTS FREE SHOTS?!" and dispensed them liberally, pouring directly into the patrons' mouths, as is the custom of our times. (Here I should admit that I sometimes derive pleasure from pouring cold liquor ON SOMEONE'S FACE if they've been a pain in the ass up until then. I mean, I only derive that pleasure if the face-pouring was totally accidental, of course.) "What's the best b4r on XXXX Street?" I yelled, and the crowd all yelled back "CPRB!" But this time I verbalized my inner monologue I said, "Yeah, you're all whores." And they liked it.

It was cool to be there, mobbed, giving out free shots, shouting at the crowd and being shouted at, surrounded by candles and drinks on the b4r I was standing on.

I crouched down when a friend of mine came up to the b4r, and she turned around and put her head in my lap as I poured into her mouth. The little things that will get drunk people excited, I tell you. If that small gesture was able to take on a deeper meaning in the imaginations of the b4rload of guys who were surrounding us, perhaps they should have considered how eager they all were to take a shot in the mouth, and how I might interpret that.

And then my friend kissed me.

I mean, it was a friendly, closed-mouth kiss, but it was on the lips nevertheless and I know she was putting on a show.

Half an hour later, some drunk, trashy bitch took a swing at an impressively tall woman who approached 300 pounds (no lie) and was dead sober, as she was working; she's a rep for a cigarette company and goes from b4r to b4r giving out free samples (those shameless motherfuckers). It was the most awesomely amusing fight I've seen in a long time; in fact, it was the first fight I've seen in a long time, period, because the owner has been cleaning up the CPRB a lot. With a bouncer in between them, the trashy bitch screamed and clawed in the direction of the mountain of a woman who was making a show of taking off her jewelry whilst shouting back. I felt sure that if she could get close enough to reach, she would take that trashy bitch's entire head in her fist and just crush it. The crowd swarmed around them immediately, because that's what always happens when there's a fight anywhere in the world at any given time for any reason- if two researchers on a three-man team in Antarctica got in a scuffle over what size ice bore to use, there would be a crowd around them. The people were jammed into the space between the pool table and the b4r, clogging the way out.

The bouncer was a new guy, and looked hesitant to take down a woman, let alone a few women, and was having a hard time keeping them apart because he was being clawed on one side and crushed on the other. I called the head of security's cell phone.
"We need you up here," I said as soon as he picked up.
"Why?" he asked.
"Fight," I blurted, and that was the entire conversation.

I retold this part of the story for the rest of the night, but words don't do it justice. Two seconds after I hung up, the head security guy came flying over the pool table out of nowhere and scaled the crowd to break up the fight. I don't think his feet touched the ground, although I imagine he trampled all over some poor person's game of 9-ball. One second there was a mob of people in front of me, and the next second there was: his head. I thought he would hit the ceiling fan, and later he said that he hadn't realized it was that close until he was ducking under it. "This was him," I was telling people later, holding out my arms like Superman.
And he pushed them down the stairs and out of the b4r.

The owner was around tonight, and after everyone had cleared out of the b4r we talked about the employee meeting on Monday. I told him that my last class ends right when the meeting starts, but that I think I can leave early. "Don't worry about it," he said. "We'll start when you get there." And then he threw three twenties on the b4r as he walked away.
"What's that for?" I called after him.
"Who loves you?" he asked.
"Um... the owner does?"
"You're god-damned skippy," he said, and disappeared up onto another floor of the b4r.

When I got home, I went straight into the bedroom and hugged LoPro. He was all sleepily aflutter and happy to see me, and wanted me to tell him all about my night; I told him I would use the bathroom and get some bread and then be back later. "Go back to sleep for a few minutes," I said, kissing him in the dark. And he did. It's been more than a few minutes, true, but the good news is that he slept right through my absence.

I broke out a loaf of homemade Russian rye bread that I got at the Russian supermarket over in the city this afternoon (I wound up making a couple trips over the river). We went with my parents, and now I'm going to have to do all my grocery shopping there. I got a lump of homemade butter, salty and clean and wrapped in paper, and I ate that on the bread with some suspicious-looking (yet delicious) Polish mixed fruit preserves. It's a very simple meal. It was fucking incredible.

It's almost five am. I'm going to rub off my black eyeliner, shimmy into some pajamas, and go wrap myself around my boyfriend under our down quilt.


* .), was a ridiculous sequence of punctuation, wasn't it? And then I followed it with an asterisk to make it that much more snarled. And here you are, down here at the complication-asterisk. Hi.

I've been sneaking into my own refrigerator.

I've been sneaking into it because every time Parsley "Tiny" Danger Pseudonym hears the door open, he comes running and his little paws hit the bottom shelf so hard that they make a THUD. And then he stands there, and he won't be moved until someone gives him a mini carrot from the bag that we always keep in there for him.

But here's the thing: we're out of carrots.

If Tiny Danger gets in there and I don't cough up some kind of a treat, that fridge door is not closing again. Because the rabbit will not move. Sure, I can push him out of the way, but he can run back faster than I can close the door. I would have to pick him up- which he hates- and carry the squirming, flailing lagamorph to the bathtub or something and leave him in there long enough to close the damned door, by which time he probably will have figured out how to get around the shower curtain and will be waiting for the inevitable moment when I open the fridge door to put back whatever it was that I'd just taken out. I've been placating him with bits of apple, but the apple bits are going bad, and they won't last much longer.

Please send mini carrots before Parsley bites off my face.

Labels: Bunny

Site Stats!

Today I reached my 20,000th hit. Damn.

I just passed my 222nd post and forgot to say something. Damn.

There's a Cadbury egg in my purse but I left it in the other room and I don't want to have to scale the bunny gate to get it. Damn.

A new website for my devoted fanbase of seven individuals* to check out: FreeRice. Logic Professor introduced me to it last night; every time you choose the correct definition of a word, they donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. Now I'm addicted. GO GET YOUR VOCAB/RICE ON!

On to the fun part: search keywords!

• "cupcake apocalypse"- I don't have any info on that, but I WANT TO BE THERE WHEN IT HAPPENS.


• "dell inspiron 1525 smells like something is burning"- I sincerely hope that this individual wasn't googling that from the burning Inspiron itself. Actually, wait: yes I do.


• "probability of a zombie take over"- I place it at near 100%.


• "statistics about cupcakes" (multiple incidences)- First of all, what kind of statistics are you people looking for?! The standard deviation of mean cupcake volume? Sprinkle dispersion? Second of all, this site is where you will find Cupcakes about statistics, not the other way around.


• "zombie bunny", "zombie chews", and "zombie rabbit"- Totally.


• "how to open a fucking bottle of wine"- BWAHAHA... I love the hint of desperation. Shortly after googling that, this person smashed the bottle on the edge of the computer desk.


• "i broke the cork what now wine"- I only find this funny because of where I imagined the punctuation: "I broke the cork! What now, wine?!"


• "trample stories"- I was unaware that such a category of stories existed, or, more importantly, that there were enough of them to merit a category. Until now.


• "eat me lures"- Again with the placement of punctuation: "Eat me, lures!"


• "chicken + 'food poisoning' + puking"- Oh dear.


• "creepy computer that knows everything about you"- Oh dear indeed.

and speaking of Stats...

So. I was kind of avoiding blogging about the flaming disaster that was the second stat test because there's a violent minor controversy with it, in that almost everyone failed and the class is preparing to draw and quarter blaming the professor. Isn't that convenient? I'll usually think when kids do that, but I understand where they're coming from. I was sure that I failed because that test fucked with my head. There were a lot of trick questions and types of problems that we weren't expecting, such as things that were covered on the last test, or overly complicated problems with one simple answer. Not cool, Stat Prof, not cool. I kept thinking, This can't be the answer, but I'm putting it anyway, because it's my best guess, and lo, with the help of extra credit, I got a hundred (it would have been 106 if I hadn't erased a correct answer that just seemed too simple to be right, and left it blank instead). There was enough mutiny (an entire class period worth of it, heartfelt and pointed, from over a dozen students) that on Monday we're taking another test for a chance to earn 25 more points. I don't feel good about that hundred, actually. Not because I feel guilty that everyone else failed (sympathetic, yes; guilty, no), but because it felt like dumb luck that it worked out that way.


* YEAH, that's right, I'm up to seven now! YEAH ME.

Labels: Cleaning Out The Cupboard, Statistics

This is the ninth Wednesday I will go straight from school to work, work all night, then get up for school again tomorrow. I have six left.

Last night I discovered something disturbing: the last class I need to graduate with an associate's is not offered in the fall.

Looks like I'm transfering without graduating. Oh well. We'll celebrate twice as much when I get my bachelor's seventeen years from now.

LoPro's temperature is back to normal and he's feeling much better.

I'd better put some pants on and go to statistics.

Wait- those last two sentences were not related. He's already at school teaching; I just haven't gotten out of my pajamas yet. I swear.

Some time early this morning LoPro cast off his hoodie like it was on fire and now he's down to 99.something degrees. Overnight he was being fairly clingy, which was a shame because according to him I was too cold to touch. I contend that he was a billion degrees and I was just fine; he argues that I'm a lizard. "NO SKIN! NO SKIN!" he'd say if I laid a hand on his leg or moved my face under his chin, but he insisted on keeping one behoodied arm over me. Now the fever is much better but his throat is pretty sore and he's considering staying home from school. If you're reading this from your Bloglines a couple hours from now, babe, and you're debating whether or not to stay home, GET BACK IN BED AND STAY THERE. THIS IS ME ADVISING YOU FROM AFAR. THERE'S OJ IN THE FRIDGE AND DAYQUIL ON THE SHELF NEXT TO THE BED. I WILL BE HOME AT 4. WHY AM I SHOUTING?

Yeah, really: philosophy can wait, and if he stays home, Logic Professor will be making 20 or 30 college students very, very happy on this fine spring day.

As for Vista, FUCK VISTA. Sisyphus and Vista could keep each other occupied for eternity. I got the printer working this morning- even though, according to Vista, the driver still isn't done downloading from last night... like hell it isn't, bitch- so three out of five of the things I had to write for biology are printed. The other two will have to be done at the library, because either my computer or our internet has some grand objection to EBSCO, and I can't get ahold of the other two research articles I need. ON SECOND THOUGHT, BABE, I WILL BE HOME AT 5 OR SIX. IF YOU FALL AND CAN'T GET UP, SEND PARSLEY TO COME FIND ME.

Speaking of Parsley (or Parse-a-lee, as LoPro's little nephew calls him), he spent most of this research project running around my chair in circles, periodically pausing to chew on my pant leg. Sometimes I'd put a hand down for him to run into, and that seemed to keep him happy.

Silly rabbit.

Labels: Bunny vs. LoPro, Higher Education, Logic Professor

I hate Vista.

It's after midnight, I'm tired, and Vista is stopping me from completing a project. It's stopping me because it won't cough up the web pages I need to look at- sometimes I click on links and it does nothing, sometimes I click and only the header of the page comes up, sometimes I click and a screenful of gibberish pops up, and once in a while I click and the actual page shows up- then disappears. It won't download the driver for the printer I need to print on, and it is so slow that solving these problems could take the rest of the night.

The condensed update is that Dell said they'd replace my machine with anything I wanted, and I said "Sure, give me a 1520 because it comes with XP!" and they said "Sorry, Microsoft is standing behind us with a gun as we speak and they won't let us sell that anymore," so I decided to wipe Vista and put XP on myself, except I got worried that I might destroy my computer accidentally so I decided to put it off until this project was complete, but you know what? I can't do the project anyway.

Fuck it. I'm going to bed. We'll see what I can get done tomorrow morning before class.

P.S. LoPro said he felt a little sick this afternoon, then he wouldn't eat dinner, and now he's limp as a rag doll and has a fever of 101. Very worried, especially since he insisted on bundling up in a hoodie and getting under a down comforter. The last time I crept into the bedroom and stuck my hand under the hood (yeah, he's sleeping with the hood up) he felt like he was on fire. Still, he says he doesn't feel hot, so I guess it's okay... ?
P.P.S. Today I added his last name to our mailbox. He took a picture.

MY NEPHEW
Logic Professor is walking out to his car to go to work; Cup and JQ are hanging out the front door.
CUP: Bye bye! Happy Easter!
JQ: Happy Easter!
CUP: Drive safely!
JQ: Drive safely! Don't... be... make sure... be careful!
LOPRO: Okay, I will!
JQ: Don't... make... be... don't let your wheels... (pauses to think)... GO ON THE SIDEWALK!


MY FATHER
DAD: Where did Logic Professor go?
CUP: He had to go to work.
DAD: I only had one thing I wanted to do today, and now I can't do it!
CUP: What's that?
DAD: Bug your boyfriend!
CUP: About what, Dad?
DAD: The analytic-synthetic dichotomy!
CUP: What?! You wouldn't rather bother him about living in sin with your daughter?
DAD: Who gives a fuck about that?!


MORE NEPHEW
JQ: (bringing a handful of leaves over and dropping them at our feet in the backyard) Here you go, guys! I brought you some foooood!
JUL and CUP: Thank you!
JQ: Eat it!
CUP: (picks up a leaf and pretends to nibble) Nom nom nom!
JQ: No, get down and EAT IT! EAT IT LIKE A DOG!

Labels: Dr. Thumbscre.ws, Family

Yesterday Logic Professor moved in.

Parsley "Tiny" Danger Pseudonym got locked safely away in a cage (a condition with which he is almost entirely unfamiliar, but which he took in stride because hey, there was food in there!). We loaded all the furniture from the Logic Lair into a Uhaul and delivered the contents to LoPro's sister and brother-in-law (they helped us move and needed new living room furniture), LoPro's parents' basement (for storage), and finally our place, where the remainder of his furniture is dangerously piled everywhere. This is great for Par, who has been scampering over cushions and large pieces of furniture all morning. At one point he looked up at me rather pitifully from the smooth top of LoPro's desk, unable to get down, his little paws slipping out from under him; I picked him up and set him on the floor, and as I turned to leave I heard him clambering back up over a pile of cushions and onto the desk again.

My quality of life increased dramatically overnight. Now I have measuring cups, a little spice shelf, extra sponges and shower cleaner, a couch, and a headboard. "I hope you two know what you're doing," LoPro's mom said to me when we were dropping off stuff for storage at her house. Oh, we know what we're doing. I have a new dresser and LoPro has new bookshelves!

Later at the diner, we realized that our five month anniversary is this week. "We've only been going out for five months?" I exclaimed. "What the fuck are we doing?!" But last night I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder, just like I always do, except this time it was in our house, not my house, and that made me very happy.

I opened my eyes at around six am and looked at my boyfriend in the dark. He was already awake, woken up by the same thing I was. Loud noises out on the street. Broken glass. Shouting.
"What happened?" I croaked, still sick and hoarse.
"That sounded like gunshots," LoPro whispered. We climbed out of bed and approached the window from the side.
"Where are you at?" someone out on the street shouted. Logic Professor told me not to open the window, which might sound obvious to you, but rubbernecking is my hobby and even with some guy outside apparently firing into the Mexican grocery store downstairs, possibly looking for someone, there was a chance I would have still have stuck my head outside to see what was going on.
"Call the police," he said, and I did. Hoarse as I was, I was probably the wrong person to call, because it was hard for me to make myself heard while whispering.

So a bevy of police showed up shortly thereafter, and nothing interesting came of it (that we know of). They talked to the owner of the store or building, I guess, advising him to board up, get new glass in the morning, and "save some face and get a camera."

"Welcome to Cupboardsburg," I whispered to Logic Professor after the cops had left and we were back in bed. Then I added, "Is there anything I need to know about your history?"
"I have a number of bounties out on my head," he said.
"Aww, man," I muttered.

This morning while I was in the shower my intrepid boyfriend put on shoes and a CPRB hat and went down to the little Mexican grocery store just as the guys who installed the new glass were leaving. He picked up a couple glass bottles of Mexican soda for us- fruit punch Refresco Goya and lime Jarritos.
"Hey, I live upstairs," he said to the woman at the counter. "What happened last night?"
"I don't know," she said, holding up her hands to indicate that she didn't understand. He thinks she could have- but didn't want to- talk about it. So he just paid and left.

I called out of work for tonight so after Easter dinner at my parents' house I can come home and continue sorting out the boxes and reorganizing our lives onto a single, shared set of bookshelves.

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Bunny vs. LoPro, Flat Life, Logic Professor

Logic Professor has been begging me to blog about this since it happened.

The security at the Cool Punk Rock B4r is provided primarily by a gang* that hangs out there. I like them, I'm friends with some of them, and I'm glad they're there. We have bouncers, but the presence of the gang is apparently what keeps sk!nheads out. Personally, I've never had the opportunity to spit on one see one at the b4r, as I was hired long after that particular soap opera unfolded. I'm amazed that up here in the progressive and cultured northeast that this is even an issue. I imagine that the entire sk!nhead faction consists of about five hapless, diehard individuals.

The other night, ARA (Anti-Racist Action) dropped off a flier with pictures of those five diehard individuals; supposedly they've been trying to recruit on our street, and ARA advised us to keep a lookout and refuse service to them (noted, agreed)**. The CPRB's resident gang's main kid made photocopies, and at the end of the night I handed out a couple to a gang member***, a probie, and Logic Professor, who had come to pick me up at the end of the night.

Reading the flier, the member announced, unironically, "I fucking hate Nazis."

We've been laughing about that ever since. Like, way to take a tough stance on that one, pal! Thanks for clearing up your position on that, because otherwise we would have assumed that, like everyone else, you love Nazis! (Personally, I find their little crew cuts simply darling.)




* Technically they're a "crew". "Yeah, and the Hell's Angels are a motorcycle club," said one of the managers at the CPRB when I corrected him on that count.

** After talking this over with LoPro, I've changed my mind and decided that should it ever come up, I will not refuse to serve them, but will refuse their tips and will make it clear that they are not welcome in our b4r.

*** While I was at it, I asked about the Pagans, who have shown up a few times in the past month, wearing their stupid swastika t-shirts, and the gang doesn't seem to feel they're a threat right now. I know they're not a threat to me because I'm white, but I'm afraid to refuse service to them and I hate being intimidated.****

*** Wow, this post has made my region sound like a hotbed for racist activity when it's nothing of the sort.

Labels: Cool Punk Rock B4r

Last night I took my mother to McDonald's and Target. A good time was had by all. No, really- that wasn't code for "and it was a total disaster." A good time really was had by all, and it was great to spend some time alone with my mom. I was able to obtain some french fries and Draino, and this morning was the first shower I've had all week without being up to my cankles in murky bathwater. Not that I mind; as long as I'm not bathing in the Ganges, I consider it a pleasant experience. However, if I had let the tub go un-Drainoed much longer, the downstairs neighbors would have been bathing with me.

It was a quick shower anyway, because I was on my way to the doctor with a sore throat, multiple scorpion stings, burn marks from an unexpected lightning strike (are they ever expected?) and a full-body outbreak of boils. (Possible origin of sore throat: doting mother, by way of shared Shamrock Shake?) Normally I wouldn't bother good old Doctor F. with a sore throat- in fact, I've only seen him five or so times since I switched to a grown-up doctor from my old pediatrician- but it seems to be persistant and/or recurring, and LoPro reminded me to finally get it looked at. After all, I am on Spring Break WOOOO TITTIES!

I had called earlier this morning, and to my utter amazement the receptionist said I could come in and be seen right away. This, I thought, is what it must be like to live in Sweden. So I quickly Drainoed the tub, scrubbed the barnacles off my back, and went to see Doctor F. It turns out that I have a virus and allergies, and I was making up the part about the scorpions, lightning, and boils to liven up the previous paragraph so you would keep reading my pansy-ass account of a sore throat. I did not misrepresent my symptoms to Dr. F. in a similar fashion.

So the virus will go away, and in the meantime I should take a freakin' vitamin. But allergies? That's a new one to me, and the plan now is to pretend I never heard the doctor said that, because I was just fine without that knowledge, and don't feel that I suffer from an undue amount of sniffles. *sniff* Besides, he blamed dust as the culprit, and since dust (and the occasional tubload of filthy skin-flake water) appear to be permanent aspects of my life, I'd do well not to dwell on any of their side effects. I ran the rabbit factor by him, and Dr. F. said that unless I get a rash when I touch Parsley "Tiny" Danger Pseudonym, I am probably not allergic to my sidekick, thank graf.

I don't have time to be sick (does anyone?) because this week is Moving Week at the Creepy Cupboard. The U-haul is rented for Friday, and Logic Professor's sister and brother-in-law are lined up to help. My plans for today are to argue with Dell for a few hours, make curry rice noodles for lunch, take a freakin' vitamin, dust the house (HA!), toss Parsley around the living room for a little bit, and prepare for the move.

What are y'all allergic to?

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Family

So!

As of this afternoon, I'm on spring break. Um... woooot. Cupcakes gone wild. Yeah.

Anyway.

Today I took my second statistics test, and, still freshly high from my initial victory, I got cocky and fucked the fucking fuck up this time around. There were problems I didn't answer, problems that I know I executed entirely wrong, and problems that I wildly stabbed at in the dark, coming up with impossibly improbable answers. I thought 900% seemed a little high. A little high BECAUSE IT'S IMPOSSIBLE.

Then I went to Health and Wellness where we pinched each other with fat calipers. I could not think of a viable excuse fast enough to get out of this exercise, and I didn't think the truth would cut it: I don't want to drop my pants and contract ringworm by getting pinched in the thigh with that disgusting plastic implement by one of my classmates who, frankly, I never wanted to know that well. But who does? We were all in the same boat.

After school, Logic Professor and I hung out with JQ the Neph-ew for a few hours. We collected some big sticks in my parents' backyard and built a teepee. JQ unexpectedly took a bite out of a pinecone while we were pretending to cook dinner on our pretend campfire.

Then I came home, ate a slab of salmon*, and started a new blog. Check it out!


* Another attempt to boost my protein intake. I also ate a can of tuna the other day, and it was deliciously proteiny.

Labels: Dr. Thumbscre.ws, Higher Education, Product Endorsements, Statistics

If you got here by Googling "review of Windows Vista" and want the condensed version of my opinion in under five sentences, this is it: Do not buy Windows Vista. Do not buy a computer that comes equipped with Windows Vista. Either buy XP or wait until Windows 7 comes out next year. It can't be as bad as Vista.

To preface the rest of this post, I should tell you a little about my computer. Three days ago I got a brand new Dell Inspiron 1525 with a 160GB hard drive, 1GB of memory, and a Pentium Dual Core T2330 processor (1.60GHz/533Mhz FSB/1MB cache). The only things I have done to this computer so far are that I downloaded Opera, surfed the web, set up Windows Mail (shudder), and saved three small text documents. Oh, and I downloaded three separate versions of iTunes from a couple different websites, but I haven't yet been able to open any of them.

At first I thought that I would be able to work with this operating system until I got used to it. After all, when I moved up from 3.1 to 98lite (I believe that was the next step up, but if there was an intermediary my father should feel free to remind me) it was an abrupt transition but I got used to the new system quickly enough. But after Vista successfully prevented me from installing both Firefox and iTunes, at least for the time being, my heart hardened against it with what I can sense is permanence.

To keep this from turning into a rambling tirade, here's a little structure. My Top Three Complaints About Vista are as follows:

1. It's intuitive to the point of being preventative. Vista gets credit for being more intuitive that previous operating systems, and that is true: if you want to do what Vista thinks you want to do, it can make your job as a computer user pretty easy. But God help you if you want to do something that Vista doesn't think you want to do- such as alter its own recommended settings- because you're going to have to get around Vista to find it on your own.


2. It's slow. And clunky. And it ignores my commands fairly often, although it took me a while to realize what was going on; here I had just figured it was taking a long time to get its shit together.


3. User Account Control. Oh my goodness. There is not enough bad that I can say about User Account Control. Yeah, yeah, it helps with security. But I consider this development to be too much too late; Internet Explorer had a bad reputation for being about as resitant to invasion as a screen door is to a pack of rabid jaguars but now Microsoft has overshot the issue and implemented a least user access system that makes the Patriot Act look lenient. Much like how Vista is intuitive to the point of being useless, it is also secure to the point of being useless. This is the most obvious symptom of the main thing that bothers me about Vista, which is that the user does not control Vista- Vista controls Vista. It is insulting to the user by assuming that the user is stupid and, like moving a toddler's cup of juice away from the edge of the table, keeps things out of the user's way so the user doesn't fuck everything up.

When Dell wouldn't take my computer back and replace Vista with XP, I told them that I would do it myself, and asked if there would be compatibility issues. They assured me that XP won't run on a 1525 because XP-compatible drivers for the hardware therein don't exist. LIKE HELL THEY DON'T.

Still, rather than go through the assache of stealing XP with the help of a friend in the tech support industry and downloading all my own drivers, I think I'm going to send my Inspiron 1525 back to Dell for a refund and replace it with a 1520, which comes equipped with XP.

So You're Stuck With Vista:

• Want to take User Account Control out behind the barn and shoot it? I couldn't find a fucking thing on Microsoft's support site, but I might just have been searching for the wrong 46 combinations of keywords. However, this article seems straightforward. If anyone has tried it and wants to let me know how it went, drop me an email or leave a comment.


• Not sure you trust Microsoft's recommended settings? Not sure if anybody, including Bill Gates, actually does? I used Black Viper's recommended configuration of XP and it did good things for my system's performance. Last month he put up his Vista recommendations and if ever an OS needed his help, it is this one. I have also heard good things about TweakHound's reccomended configuration.


• Can't start iTunes setup? As aghast as I am? A super-helpful person from Dell's Software Disaster Response Team told me to wait until March 18th when the new version comes out (WTF?!). Hopefully my computer will already be back at Dell by that time.


• Can't download Firefox, or anything else useful? Frustrated and fed up with using Internet Explorer, I abandoned the Firefox quest and downloaded Opera, one of the other alternabrowsers that everyone likes and got it to work on the second try by kicking User Accont Control in the nuts. The same person from Dell advised me to try getting Firefox from filehippo instead of Mozilla. They have all kinds of shit. The Creepy Cupboard heartily recommends CCleaner to keep the whole machine running smoothly; you probably already have it because I was apparently the last person to find out how FLIPPING AWESOME IT IS (I continue to thank Jul for downloading that for me).


• Know more about the subject than I do, and have better recommendations? I admit that several species of plankton are better qualified at dispensing computer advice than I. Leave a comment or email me and I'll update this post.

And that wraps up the Creepy Cupboard Roast Review of Vista.

* * * UPDATES * * *

So! Isleyahna politely suggested turning UAC off by going under Control Panel/User Accounts/Turn UAC on or off and, you know, turning it off, which I hadn't done yet; I found it to be surprisingly easy. For the record, because I realize I've said nothing but bad about this OS so far, I also found it surprisingly easy to set non-Microsoft products as my defaults on this machine, which totally came out of left field. Still, the actual step for turning off UAC was worded so ambiguously that I wonder if it's a deliberate trick to keep User Account Control on- and no, that's not me attempting to be funny.

I haven't had the computer long enough to actually know what I'm talking about, but it seems that turning off and disabling can be different, and that I should note this- processes that are turned off can rear their ugly fucking heads again under the right circumstances. And while nothing that says "User Account Control" has popped up since I told it to fuck off and die, a myriad of other unhelpful hints and strong suggestions have continued to pop up, the most annoying of which is the persistent reminder that I have put my computer's security at risk. This is perplexing. I thought I told my computer to stop telling me what was a risk, and now it is telling me that by telling it to stop telling me what is a risk, I am putting my computer at risk. OH, THE PARADOX. If I keep this computer- and that is unlikely- a formal disable of UAC (and every other security feature I can locate) will be coming.

I'm glad that Isleyahna also wrote this: "As far as the fact that NOTHING EVER SEEMS TO WORK EVER... right-click on the .exe file you're trying to use - click properties. Click the "security" tab. On each little group or username you're going to want to click "Edit" for each one and then make sure "allow" is clicked for everything there." When you right-click, you should be able to just select "Run As Administrator". Should. I haven't noticed a ding-dang difference when selecting RAA- but doing what Isleyahna said was helpful (it was also recommended by Dell's techies).

Also, I would like to note that I've seen a bunch of people on the Interweb suggest using services.msc instead of msconfig. Can't say that I have an opinion because I haven't used services.msc and don't know what the difference is. Yet. While I'm we're talking about it, here's something about using msconfig in Vista, specifically. ISN'T EVERYONE EXCITED?

Moving on, I want to mention that I have no problem with Dell. They were easy to order from, obtaining financing was fast and painless (I only wish that when I'd purchased the Rollmobile it had been from Dell), they've been easy to get ahold of (customer service has been a little sketchy so far but their tech support was great), I got my laptop only three days after ordering it, and I love the computer. I'm still getting used to the keyboard configuration (the shift button is so not where I thought it would be), but overall it's shiny and awesome.

The most important thing I wanted to reopen this post to say was that PLENTY OF PEOPLE HAVE VISTA AND ITUNES AND FIREFOX. I THINK. I know I can get Firefox if I try a little harder- I'm just not going to because I'm sending this bitch back to Dell in a week and besides, I was having a good time being indignant about the first five tries. As far as iTunes goes, OH DEAR GOD THE HORROR STORIES. Although originally iTunes was not officially compatible with Vista (and to Apple I say WTF?! because they had Vista at their disposal to play with almost two years before the rest of us), Apple's official story is now thus: get iTunes 7.2 or higher and all will be well. They have more detailed info on downloading in Vista here. I was in the process of trying out earlier post-7.2 versions of iTunes, because I heard that it could be that upgrading to the current version (7.6) might work while installing it outright might not (...?!) but now I'm holding off for Laptop 2.0: XP Version.

Bottom line: Vista can bite my ass. Robbie came up with the best adjective to describe it, and that is "obnoxious". Vista. is. obnoxious.

By now, if any of the peeps who usually read the blog are still reading, they are probably wishing that someone at the CPRB had been hit in the face with a bottle this week so I'd be talking about that instead. Sorry. You know the b4r industry is slow in the winter.

Labels: Product Endorsements

Since we're doing nothing vital in either Statistics or Health and Wellness*, I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on laundry before heading off to World Lit. Just had breakfast and took a shower.

Continue the roll call: where are you and what are you doing?



* Actually, we never do anything vital in Health and Wellness.

Labels: Cleaning Out The Cupboard, Higher Education

Today, a few hours after giving my little speech on las depressing abejas, I skipped the second half of bio to run to the library and generate a bibliography for the lab report that was due today, all the while thinking, FOR WHY?! THERE WERE NO BOOKS INVOLVED. I SHRIVELED A POTATO AND WROTE ABOUT IT. At the start of our lecture, Bio Prof had mentioned that we could turn in our completed lab reports WITH BIBLIOGRAPHIES when we took a break from lecturing, and enough people freaked out that she told us we could have our reports in her mailbox by 5:00 PM. Myself, I took this as an excuse to leave early, because Graf knows I was falling through my ass.*

Now is a good time to mention that Noodle Bib, the online MLA citation generator, has positively impacted my life way more than fire, the wheel, or the eradication of polio.

For the rest of the day, I took a nap. Snuggled with Logic Professor. Went to the diner and ate a grilled cheese. Now I'm in my purple pajama shorts and black wife beater, reading The Inferno next to LoPro; tomorrow I'm going to see my nephew, get my computer, and start five more projects for school.

Where are you and what are you doing?


* I have heard "falling through my ass" used, and use it fairly often myself, to mean "I'm tired." After LoPro asked what it meant, I triumphantly Googled it, ready to show him how everyone and their mother knows what it means... and it only turned up three hits. What the fucking fuck? At least now I'm going to have the Number One Google Rank for that phrase. NOT THAT ANYBODY WILL BE LOOKING FOR IT.

I'm off to go give a little speech in Spanish on la situación grave de las abejas. It's my second oral exam. Woooooot.

In other news, MY NEW COMPUTER WILL BE HERE TOMORROW, and by "here" I mean "at my parents' house" because Graf knows I would never have something like that delivered to this building. My neighbors would be like, laptop? What laptop? Sorry you lost your laptop. If you want, I can email Dell to complain about their delivery practices for you- ON MY NEW LAPTOP.

In lieu of a real post, I offer you these pics of Logic Professor and I at home and JQ the Neph-ew sleeping in his grandparents' bed. Now I'm off to school for three classes, then off to work for twelve or thirteen hours, then I'm going to come home, sleep for six hours, and go back to school take my second oral exam in Spanish and hand in that f-ing lab report (completed, and we didn't lose too badly at Quizzo). This is the seventh Wednesday of the semester. I have to do this eight more times; so far I'm not sick of it, and the longer I can keep it up without wanting to drop out and quit my job, the easier this semester will seem be.

Eight more.

For the next two weeks, I will be in Biology Prof's evil fucking clutches. Even though she's approximately four feet tall, looks fairly defenseless, and has sweet, grandmotherly things to say about hydrogen ions*, that woman is dangerous, I tell you.

Today was the first exam. It took two hours. It was brutal. The students are verging on mutinous.

Thursday, my first lab report is due on the osmosis/diffusion/fun-with-potatoes** experiment. Tuesday, my second lab report is due on food nutrient analysis***. Next Thursday, my Gigantic Fucking Research project is due. I tried to start it, but when I wound up in the bound periodicals section of the library I was drawn to some magazine from the 1920s and two hours later I was out of research time.

What scares me about this arrangement is that there's no time between projects to get feedback. If I suck, I'm going to suck for two solid weeks before I find out about it.

Tonight I'm going to try to go to the Quizzo that a b4r friend of mine is hosting down the street from the CPRB, but if Thursday's lab report isn't done by then, Quizzo will have to wait.

Wow. Listen to how responsible I sound. Dude.



* "Poor hydrogen," she says sadly.
** There were potatoes involved, and we shriveled them. DIE, POTATOES, DIE!! And I'm expected to write up a serious academic lab report about this? In what section do I include the part about "DIE, POTATOES, DIE!!"?
*** We seriously violated a lab rule by tasting our Mystery Substance. It was italian dressing, and it turns out that it contains sugars and lipids. Conclusion: delicious.

Labels: Higher Education

Today I bought a laptop.

"Bought" is a strong word though; it is more accurate to say that I arranged to buy a laptop, a fairly inexpensive one (oh, but that can be so painfully relative), assuming that I'll make enough money in the next six months to be able to keep it and eventually call it mine.

Can you smell the foreshadowing? My fatalistic side feels that by opening a line of credit with Dell I've just rerouted my destiny to include unemployment in my near future. This will force me to decide between paying for the apartment, the Rollmobile, and my shiny new laptop; given that the apartment can't drop me off at work- that is, when I find another job- and the laptop doesn't keep me out of the rain, I will wind up living in my car. Then some kind of mysterious automotive catastrophe (such as ants in the gas tank) will befall the Rollmobile, my last possession, and since this is my worst-case scenario fantasy and it must be complete, that automotive catastrophe will be impossible for me to fix by myself, yet too expensive to have fixed by a professional and not covered by insurance. My credit in shambles because of the fateful laptop purchase, I will be unable to purchase another car/home.

And then I will think back to this post.

Still, I'm super excited about the laptop, and am thinking of names for it (Lappy? Computunia? Mistake?). I'll be able to do schoolwork anywhere, and Logic Professor and I will be able to get rid of the rickety, hideous old K-mart computer desk that I curb-poached a couple years ago (I could have bought the same one brand new for something like ten bucks and I seriously got out of my car for the entire neighborhood to see and risked tetanus taking it off someone's lawn) (I might still be risking tetanus by sitting here now). That will make room for something with drawers when we officially move in together, so I can pick my clothes up off the floor, and when I am able to finally say for sure that yes, I know where my underwear is, that will be a happy day.

Until I have to pawn my underwear to pay off the laptop, that is. Then I'll be thinking, why didn't I save the computer desk to sleep under when I get evicted?

Labels: Flat Life, The Imminent Zombie Apocalypse