Friends of mine got orders cut for DC, and left today. For… lord, about three years, they’ve been here and part of my ‘group’. The ones you go out to dinner with, watch movies, and, if you’re feeling froggy, a drink or two. As a child, the military (plus civilian moves) taught me to make friends fast, because you didn’t know when you were leaving again.
And DC isn’t that far.
Wait, my computer still loves me *knock on wood*.
For the third month in a row, my cell phone provider has managed to screw the pooch on my bill. I love text messaging. It’s quick, easy, and my friends who work in an actual office can do it without getting in trouble with their boss. Everyone wins.
My provider had run a special for their customers, to check out the voice-to-text feature that would convert all your voice mail into text messages. Great idea, right? Not really, as it cost your first born in order to keep it running. Naturally, I call and cancel said feature.
They removed it all right, including the free add-on that gives me x amount of text messages per month.
For three months they have been screwing up my bill because they forgot to add that feature back. After I called them several times to tell them they need to add it. They always credit me back, and apologize profusely. And I am always polite.
But, after three months, I’m convinced they’re just doing this to piss me off.
I’ve read most takes on the vampires, the werewolves, and the fey. Including I Was A Teenage Fairy by Lia Block. Didn’t expect that one, did you?
What I cannot understand is how the vicious killer of Stoker and Rice is now the wise-cracking, reformed Bad Boy (gender profiling not withstanding, but ‘bad girl’ makes it sound like rather porn-like) who helps at the local animal shelter and over-pays a little on their taxes.
Not that I don’t like the new version, but can’t we blend the two and see what happens? It seems you need one or the other for it, and I personally like having my cake and eating it too. (Testament to this is the size of my butt)
I’ve got edits on Clio to do, and I’ve started researching agents. Mainly, I see which ones my most-read authors are using and then research that agency, always coming up with another one along the way that I need to read up on. Hopefully, I can have a working list of agents who I can query.
First, I need to finish the editing. And the query…
As stated yesterday, I went to register for classes in the afternoon.
After sitting through an orientation that did absolutely nothing, I had to sit through a speech from the campus Rent-a-Cop, who told me (repeatedly) that the smokers area is outside to the right. Just go outside, turn right, and there’s the smokers. The smokers are outside to the right. (Yes sir, Mr. Lemming, I got it.)
I wait in line to see an advisor, there were three working, and I don’t think any of them had a clue as to what was going on.
So I get to the advisor… and I’m told that I’m not really a student. I show them my paperwork that, yes, I am a student, and then I have to go… somewhere, and ask them. They had no idea where I was to go.
I track down the woman in charge of that little snafu, and she tells me to check the front office. So I go to the office, passing by nurses hocking goodies, and other people who look just as confused as I felt. In the office, the nice woman working the desk told me I needed to take a placement test as my SAT scores are over five years old.
“How come I wasn’t told of this before?”
“It should be on your acceptance letter.” I show her said acceptance letter, which is free of anything suggesting I take a placement test. “Oh. Well, it should have been here.”
“Can we just give me a perfect score and let me register? It’s been a crappy day.”
“No, but we can schedule you for a placement test.”
I’ve seen better organizational skills out of Chubby Puppy when she attacks invisible bugs.
Which is not good for a writing deadline. However, it does keep the emotions at bay, so it’s not all bad. I’m going to get started on a February Lady from Pamela Wynne for my trip to Germany coming up in a few months.
A friend of mine, who I tried to teach to knit (she’s now sporting holes in her wall the exact shape and size of a pair of U.S. size 9 needles) made the comment that, if not for people like me, all the old arts would die out.
Glad to see I’m keeping some of pioneer America alive.
And today is student registration. I haven’t done this since I was nineteen. Lord help me.
My view of an outcome from a deployment is, was, very black or white. My husband either comes home on his own power. Or he doesn’t. There is no middle ground there to work with.
One or the other.
I know that soldiers die. Jonathan was killed four years ago. Tyler less than a year. And several others in between who I will never forget, but sometimes I wish I’d never known. It would have meant losing a friend, but I wouldn’t have this hole inside me whenever I thought about them.
My stark view was shattered yesterday. A woman I used to work with, someone I considered a friend, has had to move herself and her children from their home here to Walter Reed Medical Center.
Her husband came home. After he had both of his legs blown off while serving his country. This wonderful woman, with a great family… they were good people. Still are I guess, but it seems so hard to think of them as positive with what has happened.
He did come home.
I woke up feeling like a mole. I was wrapped up in my covers, my head buried in the pillow, and the sound of hard rain outside. I had my own little burrow. For a minute I felt like a kid again.
I had to put Chubby Puppy in a flea collar a few weeks ago due to her seeming to be infested with the little bastards. She hasn’t worn one since she was a tiny puppy (by tiny, I mean less than forty pounds but more than twenty) and whenever I smell her in the mornings, I keep expecting to see a small little puppy in the bed, not the eighty-plus pound beast she’s become.
That sounds weird, “smell her in the mornings”. Makes me sound like I regularly sniff my dog. I don’t, but the aroma off the collar seems to float around her like perfume. Not entirely unpleasant, just… odd.
Fay is hammering Florida for the fifth day in a row, and I’m at the end of another week of rainy weather. I’m loving it. Don’t get me wrong, I feel bad for the people in Florida who are having to deal with the main body of Fay, but I am enjoying the current fall-out that I’m getting. If she decides to come visit me, I’ll be really unhappy.
Does renters insurance cover acts of Mother Nature?
I’ve got Clio pretty well set on things. I think. So I’m spending some time with another of the voices, a non-human female cop by the name of Cyndra. (I can’t seem to create anything but killers…. I could keep a therapist in business single handedly.)
To say that Clio is upset by this would be like saying the Titanic had a little accident.
Aside from that, things are going swimmingly for me for writing right now, so at least one thing is going right. The rest of it… eh. Have you ever had something happen where you’re not sure you’re even in your own life anymore? It’s like watching a bad episode of Passions or something. Minus Tabitha and Timmy (it’s been a few years since I tuned in for a soap opera). And it creates as much emotional turmoil as stepping on that spider that crawled out from under the bathroom vanity. I’d like to feel the emotions, just to make sure I’m in this game instead of sitting on the sidelines, but I’m not too sure I care.
I’d love to fast forward to Friday. Of all the ‘growing up’ I was forced to do (I’m still a Toys-R-Us kid), Friday is the one of the few things that still makes me giddy. Add in I’m old enough to remember the original TGIF line-up, and that’s a lot of giddiness over the years.
Anyone read Jennifer Rardin? Or the Monette/Bear work, A Companion to Wolves? I’m looking for some fluff reading, nothing heavy (no War and Peace, thanks) but entertaining. I subjected my mother to Bishop’s Black Jewels series, and while I love it, she’s more… sedate in her choices.
“Well, Queenie, they’re certainly your style…”
The polite way of saying I’ve got darker tastes than she does. How I came from her, I’ve no idea.
Work always seems worse on a Monday than any other day of the week…. except that first day back from a vacation. To add stress to an already boiling temper (just one time I’d love to rip someones eye balls out when they copped an attitude with me), my power went out for a few hours yesterday. Which wasn’t so bad, seeing as I decided to go to the pool early.
I get to the pool, get changed, get out on the deck… and no one is allowed in the water due to lightening. I’ll gladly risk electrocution, just let me in the water. (Are all Cancer’s like this, or just me?)
Today I ran my application to the college, paid the fee, and applied for the grant that will *hopefully* cover all my tuition. I can swing the cost of books, but the tuition is a killer.
And I sent GENTRY to my lovely editors (Hi Mis! Hi Liv!) a few minutes ago, and I’m going to print it tonight. Really I am. I swear, I will print out the book tonight and start reading through it.
I think.