Holy shit
I just realized I haven't posted since the 4th. Bad Em. Bad, bad Em.
So, um... let's see. What's happened since then??
I'm now just wearing braces on both ankles. They've got plastic stabilizers and a ton of neoprene and elastic, but they're decent. Since the cats peed on my last pair of tennis shoes (those shoes were good to me for 7 years... I walked all over Arizona and Utah in those things and I felt really sad about putting them in the trash), I had to buy a new pair. They're super-spiffy Rykas from QVC (I know, but I got them cheap and within 5 days by UPS). They're black water-resistant suede--super important feature for Houston summer/fall weather--with small mint green highlights. I love them. And, currently, they're the only shoes I can wear. Which is super-annoying, but whatta gonna do? I saw Dr. Hall at the end of August and he recommended PT and said he was going to consult with Ortho about whether I needed a follow-up MRI to check how things were healing. I haven't heard anything from him or his office since. He was also supposed to fill out his section of the form to allow me to get a handicap placard for my car so I don't have to walk from Timbuktu when at school or at a clinic. I spoke with one of his surly techs about 2 weeks ago now and she said the form was on his desk. I asked her to maybe put the damn thing on the top of the pile instead of stuck in the middle. Or even better, on his chair, like those of us at Dad's office used to do for super-important charts that would otherwise get lost in the piles on his desk. She refused to do either. So I'm still walking forever just to get into Walmart or to the buildings at school (I still have to take my Intro to Computers exams in a proctored environment, so I have to go up to school about once a week). I've been driving myself everywhere again which is nice, but definitely creating wear-and-tear on my right ankle. And getting up and down the stairs to my room is horrific. My ankles are pretty okay with it, but my knees aren't. My right knee has started popping extremely painfully every time I bend it. It's mainly because I can't walk down stairs like a normal person--one foot on each step, alternating--but having to step down sideways, right leg, left leg. Because I'm double-jointed, my knees hyper-extend really easily--which isn't really great on the interior structures--and my knee does exactly that every now and then when I step down on my right leg. So there's a bunch of poppity crunching going on. So fun. But I'm determined to not live downstairs again. That just isn't happening.
Holy crap. This woman is the uber-ditz of the world. I can't remember ever having a teacher that was so disorganized and unhelpful. And since I've been going to school for over 25 years, that's saying something. "Professor Roz" has become passive-agressive with me since I'm basically constantly emailing her about something. Settings are wrong; things are missing; where the hell is x assignment? She keeps repeating that there's something wrong with MY settings on my computer and the problem isn't hers. I keep telling her that it's not my settings that are the issue, it's hers. She sent me a screen shot of how she checked the box that has the etext open in a new screen just to prove that she'd done it correctly. Which was total bullshit because it didn't open in a new window before I asked her to change it. And this time I had proof because I took a screen shot of the before the email and after the nasty response from her.
This woman has moved due dates UP on us (her super-confusing due date matrix showed that a certain chapter quiz was due on Sunday, but she told us on Saturday that it was actually due on Saturday evening, and that we had all screwed up. Which I'm pretty sure we didn't. We have constant issues with parts of the assigned work missing (multimedia demos that we have to watch and complete worksheets for seem to never be there), and other parts are ridiculously difficult to find. I shouldn't have to spend hours trying to figure out where the hell some of the projects for my class are. I feel like that's part of HER job to give us instructions on how to do things. Her "instructions" are only a list of the things due and when. That's not a set of instructions, that's a to-do list.
Yesterday, I just hit my breaking point. I started to cry from the stress of it all. I've been having massive GI problems (that only appear when horribly stressed), and my body has just started shutting down--which is a stress response where my brain just can't handle any more so it just shuts off my body and brain like a switch on a toy. I shouldn't be feeling this way about a class that SHOULD be super-easy for me. For God's sake, I started out on a TI when I was a toddler and learned on a computer that ran DOS 2.0. "Mouse" and "graphical user interface" hadn't been invented yet.
And the pisser is this: I can't drop this class. Because Texas is a state that seems to be hostile to people actually LEARNING SHIT, they've instituted a policy that only allows 6 dropped classes for your entire college schooling. That means that between last summer when I began classes and whenever I finish my whatever--certificate, Associates, Bachelors--I can only drop six classes. There are a few exceptions, but not many. From what I understand, the Texas government decided that this was a way to save money. They give grants to schools each year depending on how many credit hours are being taken by the students. If a student drops a class mid-semester and then takes the course over again the next semester, Texas feels like they've now paid for the course twice and that's not okay. So they're screwing all of us over by making this ridiculous policy. They say it's to "motivate students to quickly finish their schooling." I call bullshit.
I called the head of the Computer IT department at the campus location where "Professor Roz" teaches. The woman called me back today, and we spent 20 minutes on the phone discussing all of the problems I've been having with the instructor. And I said that she might or might not hear from anyone else in the class because I seem to have been designated the standard bearer for this. While I've heard from other students of their problems and frustrations via email, they don't seem to be willing to talk to Roz themselves. One woman actually replied to my email asking if anyone else was having problems with, "Yes, I've been having problems viewing coursework, but I've just been praying that it'll fix itself." Well, I'm all for prayer, but I don't think God's really the person you need to go to in this situation. There are more Earthy places you can get the help. The department head asked me to forward some of the email exchanges I've had with Roz and some of the screen shots I've taken of the problems. I told her that I really hope she, Roz, and I can work together to make the rest of the course run a lot more smoothly. We'll see what happens.
Texas football news: Texas is 3-0, having won handily over Wyoming (37-17), New Mexico (45-0), and Ole Miss (66-31). Last weekend was a bye week, which is fine because they start conference play this Saturday against Oklahoma State. This will be a much closer game, I think. I'm super-thrilled that Kansas State won over OU on Saturday. That was so fucking fantastic I can't even tell you. And the Texans!! They are now the ONLY undefeated team in the AFC. Finally, a Houston NFL team is WINNING GAMES. We beat the Broncos and Peyton Manning on Sunday. That was awesome. However, this whole replacement NFL refs situation is just ridiculous at this point. The calls on Sunday and Monday were so wrong it's amazing. Even the NFL themselves are saying that the touchdown call at the end of the Packers/Seahawks game was wrong. That says something.
The only politicky thing I will say here is this: The whole airplane window thing Romney said the other day just blows my mind. This is what I posted on Facebook: Seriously? Romney said this at a fundraiser the other day: “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no - and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the wind
ows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.” How many things can you count as scientifically bad/wrong in this quote? I can definitely say that you don't want to bring oxygen into a fire by opening a window (just ask any firefighter). You also don't want to open a window in a plane. Granted you want your pilot and copilot to be able to land the plane safely (which is why they have oxygen masks), but opening a window would be a bad idea for several reasons, the least of which is potential explosive decompression. LA Times story of this.
I'm currently hanging out at the library at school. I drove Sis up to campus for her art class. She is taking drawing and yoga (her required Fine Arts and Kinesiology credits) this semester. However, about 2 weeks ago, she fell off her stool in art class and landed with her back on the leg of the metal easel behind her. In doing so, she cracked two ribs and gave herself whiplash. Which means yoga is out. I told her that if she withdraws from both classes, she shouldn't get penalized for the drops since it's medically necessary. She's going to talk to an advisor just to make sure. It's seriously cold in here. And I've been writing this post for about an hour (holy crap, I had a lot to say, didn't I?). Which means I only have to wait another hour-and-a-half. At least I have a ton of work for both Intro to Computers and English Comp to do. Hopefully, the Computer shit is all there this time at the beginning so I don't have to mess with the instructor again. I'm seriously tired of that.
OH! I forgot the most awesome bit.
Sunday night, Mom and Sis went to Walmart to do our grocery shopping. I was in the kitchen when they came home. Mom said, "I need you to put on your shoes because you have to help me bring in the TV." I said, "The WHAT?" Yes, she bought a new TV for our living room the other night. She found a 42" HD LCD TV for $275. We're always super-frugal, but she said we needed a new TV anyway, and this was an insanely awesome deal, and she couldn't NOT get it. I can't even describe the difference between the old TV and the new. Well, I can, actually.
The old one, on the right, is a Magnavox we bought for my grandmother back in 1992. It's 36" and weighs at least 150lbs. Mom and I BARELY got it off the chest we use as an entertainment center. The new one? 25lbs. (What I'm impressed with is that our carpet acutally looks kind of clean and is cat barf free.) Mom has been mesmerized by the sharpness of the picture, even with the standard definition feeds. I told her we needed to add the HD package to our Uverse now that we have HD TVs in every room except her bedroom. I called AT&T yesterday, and I was able to get a promotion that gives us the package--usually $10 a month--for free for the next 12 months. I rock. I spent about 30 minutes last night setting all of our shows to record off the HD channels instead of the standard def channels. I'm excited to see what they look like in HD. I know for a fact that I'm going to really love it when watching Person of Interest, because with the standard def cut-off screen I could never see what The Machine was typing up in the corners. Now I will. So awesome. I just need to call Goodwill or the Salvation Army to see if they'll take the old giant TV. It still works, so I don't see why they would object to it. All I know is that we're going to have to get SOMEONE to come get it, because we can't even lift the fucker.
Finally, I got to see Endeavour.
She was still attached to her 747, and I'm still pissed that she wasn't here in Houston to stay, but it was really awesome. What blew my mind was not only the size of her, but how patchwork she looked.
For sure an amazing craft indeed. At Johnson Space Center, we now have the trainer that the astronauts used, which means we can climb all in it, but it's not the same. I've always felt that the distribution of the shuttles should have gone like this: Smithsonian gets Discovery, Kennedy gets Atlantis, Houston gets Endeavour, and California gets Enterprise (because Enterprise was the only one that didn't fly in space, but she was the one that was flight-tested at Dryden and Edwards AFBs, so they have a serious tie to the Shuttle program and deserve one). The one place I was NOT okay with was New York (and I'm pretty sure ALL of Houston feels the same way, just judging by the traffic and crowds to see this one). Director Bolden is a traitor to Houston and I can't wait until Lori Garver takes over. I've met her (back when I was with Heather) and she's reasonable and thinks not just of money but of fairness.
No matter what, though, I GOT TO SEE A FREAKING SPACE SHUTTLE UP CLOSE.
So, um... let's see. What's happened since then??
I'm now just wearing braces on both ankles. They've got plastic stabilizers and a ton of neoprene and elastic, but they're decent. Since the cats peed on my last pair of tennis shoes (those shoes were good to me for 7 years... I walked all over Arizona and Utah in those things and I felt really sad about putting them in the trash), I had to buy a new pair. They're super-spiffy Rykas from QVC (I know, but I got them cheap and within 5 days by UPS). They're black water-resistant suede--super important feature for Houston summer/fall weather--with small mint green highlights. I love them. And, currently, they're the only shoes I can wear. Which is super-annoying, but whatta gonna do? I saw Dr. Hall at the end of August and he recommended PT and said he was going to consult with Ortho about whether I needed a follow-up MRI to check how things were healing. I haven't heard anything from him or his office since. He was also supposed to fill out his section of the form to allow me to get a handicap placard for my car so I don't have to walk from Timbuktu when at school or at a clinic. I spoke with one of his surly techs about 2 weeks ago now and she said the form was on his desk. I asked her to maybe put the damn thing on the top of the pile instead of stuck in the middle. Or even better, on his chair, like those of us at Dad's office used to do for super-important charts that would otherwise get lost in the piles on his desk. She refused to do either. So I'm still walking forever just to get into Walmart or to the buildings at school (I still have to take my Intro to Computers exams in a proctored environment, so I have to go up to school about once a week). I've been driving myself everywhere again which is nice, but definitely creating wear-and-tear on my right ankle. And getting up and down the stairs to my room is horrific. My ankles are pretty okay with it, but my knees aren't. My right knee has started popping extremely painfully every time I bend it. It's mainly because I can't walk down stairs like a normal person--one foot on each step, alternating--but having to step down sideways, right leg, left leg. Because I'm double-jointed, my knees hyper-extend really easily--which isn't really great on the interior structures--and my knee does exactly that every now and then when I step down on my right leg. So there's a bunch of poppity crunching going on. So fun. But I'm determined to not live downstairs again. That just isn't happening.
Holy crap. This woman is the uber-ditz of the world. I can't remember ever having a teacher that was so disorganized and unhelpful. And since I've been going to school for over 25 years, that's saying something. "Professor Roz" has become passive-agressive with me since I'm basically constantly emailing her about something. Settings are wrong; things are missing; where the hell is x assignment? She keeps repeating that there's something wrong with MY settings on my computer and the problem isn't hers. I keep telling her that it's not my settings that are the issue, it's hers. She sent me a screen shot of how she checked the box that has the etext open in a new screen just to prove that she'd done it correctly. Which was total bullshit because it didn't open in a new window before I asked her to change it. And this time I had proof because I took a screen shot of the before the email and after the nasty response from her.
This woman has moved due dates UP on us (her super-confusing due date matrix showed that a certain chapter quiz was due on Sunday, but she told us on Saturday that it was actually due on Saturday evening, and that we had all screwed up. Which I'm pretty sure we didn't. We have constant issues with parts of the assigned work missing (multimedia demos that we have to watch and complete worksheets for seem to never be there), and other parts are ridiculously difficult to find. I shouldn't have to spend hours trying to figure out where the hell some of the projects for my class are. I feel like that's part of HER job to give us instructions on how to do things. Her "instructions" are only a list of the things due and when. That's not a set of instructions, that's a to-do list.
Yesterday, I just hit my breaking point. I started to cry from the stress of it all. I've been having massive GI problems (that only appear when horribly stressed), and my body has just started shutting down--which is a stress response where my brain just can't handle any more so it just shuts off my body and brain like a switch on a toy. I shouldn't be feeling this way about a class that SHOULD be super-easy for me. For God's sake, I started out on a TI when I was a toddler and learned on a computer that ran DOS 2.0. "Mouse" and "graphical user interface" hadn't been invented yet.
And the pisser is this: I can't drop this class. Because Texas is a state that seems to be hostile to people actually LEARNING SHIT, they've instituted a policy that only allows 6 dropped classes for your entire college schooling. That means that between last summer when I began classes and whenever I finish my whatever--certificate, Associates, Bachelors--I can only drop six classes. There are a few exceptions, but not many. From what I understand, the Texas government decided that this was a way to save money. They give grants to schools each year depending on how many credit hours are being taken by the students. If a student drops a class mid-semester and then takes the course over again the next semester, Texas feels like they've now paid for the course twice and that's not okay. So they're screwing all of us over by making this ridiculous policy. They say it's to "motivate students to quickly finish their schooling." I call bullshit.
I called the head of the Computer IT department at the campus location where "Professor Roz" teaches. The woman called me back today, and we spent 20 minutes on the phone discussing all of the problems I've been having with the instructor. And I said that she might or might not hear from anyone else in the class because I seem to have been designated the standard bearer for this. While I've heard from other students of their problems and frustrations via email, they don't seem to be willing to talk to Roz themselves. One woman actually replied to my email asking if anyone else was having problems with, "Yes, I've been having problems viewing coursework, but I've just been praying that it'll fix itself." Well, I'm all for prayer, but I don't think God's really the person you need to go to in this situation. There are more Earthy places you can get the help. The department head asked me to forward some of the email exchanges I've had with Roz and some of the screen shots I've taken of the problems. I told her that I really hope she, Roz, and I can work together to make the rest of the course run a lot more smoothly. We'll see what happens.
Texas football news: Texas is 3-0, having won handily over Wyoming (37-17), New Mexico (45-0), and Ole Miss (66-31). Last weekend was a bye week, which is fine because they start conference play this Saturday against Oklahoma State. This will be a much closer game, I think. I'm super-thrilled that Kansas State won over OU on Saturday. That was so fucking fantastic I can't even tell you. And the Texans!! They are now the ONLY undefeated team in the AFC. Finally, a Houston NFL team is WINNING GAMES. We beat the Broncos and Peyton Manning on Sunday. That was awesome. However, this whole replacement NFL refs situation is just ridiculous at this point. The calls on Sunday and Monday were so wrong it's amazing. Even the NFL themselves are saying that the touchdown call at the end of the Packers/Seahawks game was wrong. That says something.
The only politicky thing I will say here is this: The whole airplane window thing Romney said the other day just blows my mind. This is what I posted on Facebook: Seriously? Romney said this at a fundraiser the other day: “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no - and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the wind
ows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.” How many things can you count as scientifically bad/wrong in this quote? I can definitely say that you don't want to bring oxygen into a fire by opening a window (just ask any firefighter). You also don't want to open a window in a plane. Granted you want your pilot and copilot to be able to land the plane safely (which is why they have oxygen masks), but opening a window would be a bad idea for several reasons, the least of which is potential explosive decompression. LA Times story of this.
I'm currently hanging out at the library at school. I drove Sis up to campus for her art class. She is taking drawing and yoga (her required Fine Arts and Kinesiology credits) this semester. However, about 2 weeks ago, she fell off her stool in art class and landed with her back on the leg of the metal easel behind her. In doing so, she cracked two ribs and gave herself whiplash. Which means yoga is out. I told her that if she withdraws from both classes, she shouldn't get penalized for the drops since it's medically necessary. She's going to talk to an advisor just to make sure. It's seriously cold in here. And I've been writing this post for about an hour (holy crap, I had a lot to say, didn't I?). Which means I only have to wait another hour-and-a-half. At least I have a ton of work for both Intro to Computers and English Comp to do. Hopefully, the Computer shit is all there this time at the beginning so I don't have to mess with the instructor again. I'm seriously tired of that.
OH! I forgot the most awesome bit.
Sunday night, Mom and Sis went to Walmart to do our grocery shopping. I was in the kitchen when they came home. Mom said, "I need you to put on your shoes because you have to help me bring in the TV." I said, "The WHAT?" Yes, she bought a new TV for our living room the other night. She found a 42" HD LCD TV for $275. We're always super-frugal, but she said we needed a new TV anyway, and this was an insanely awesome deal, and she couldn't NOT get it. I can't even describe the difference between the old TV and the new. Well, I can, actually.
The old one, on the right, is a Magnavox we bought for my grandmother back in 1992. It's 36" and weighs at least 150lbs. Mom and I BARELY got it off the chest we use as an entertainment center. The new one? 25lbs. (What I'm impressed with is that our carpet acutally looks kind of clean and is cat barf free.) Mom has been mesmerized by the sharpness of the picture, even with the standard definition feeds. I told her we needed to add the HD package to our Uverse now that we have HD TVs in every room except her bedroom. I called AT&T yesterday, and I was able to get a promotion that gives us the package--usually $10 a month--for free for the next 12 months. I rock. I spent about 30 minutes last night setting all of our shows to record off the HD channels instead of the standard def channels. I'm excited to see what they look like in HD. I know for a fact that I'm going to really love it when watching Person of Interest, because with the standard def cut-off screen I could never see what The Machine was typing up in the corners. Now I will. So awesome. I just need to call Goodwill or the Salvation Army to see if they'll take the old giant TV. It still works, so I don't see why they would object to it. All I know is that we're going to have to get SOMEONE to come get it, because we can't even lift the fucker.
Finally, I got to see Endeavour.
She was still attached to her 747, and I'm still pissed that she wasn't here in Houston to stay, but it was really awesome. What blew my mind was not only the size of her, but how patchwork she looked.
For sure an amazing craft indeed. At Johnson Space Center, we now have the trainer that the astronauts used, which means we can climb all in it, but it's not the same. I've always felt that the distribution of the shuttles should have gone like this: Smithsonian gets Discovery, Kennedy gets Atlantis, Houston gets Endeavour, and California gets Enterprise (because Enterprise was the only one that didn't fly in space, but she was the one that was flight-tested at Dryden and Edwards AFBs, so they have a serious tie to the Shuttle program and deserve one). The one place I was NOT okay with was New York (and I'm pretty sure ALL of Houston feels the same way, just judging by the traffic and crowds to see this one). Director Bolden is a traitor to Houston and I can't wait until Lori Garver takes over. I've met her (back when I was with Heather) and she's reasonable and thinks not just of money but of fairness.
No matter what, though, I GOT TO SEE A FREAKING SPACE SHUTTLE UP CLOSE.