After an involuntary hiatus, I'm back.
After forced modernization, guh! But, I s'pose it had to happen sometime...
Background: bout a month and a half ago, my beloved, mostly-faithful desktop decided it was done, now and forever apparently, picking up my house's network on its wireless adapter. I spent a couple of weeks researching on my sister's and boss's computers trying to figure out what was up, then a bit of time with the Internet guys, the router guys, and the adapter guys, who all basically concluded what I had already. Anyway, I think the adapter would pick up the Interwebz in the future, in another house on another router - though of course that helps little for my current situation, eh?
So I figured I'd cave, and get a cheap-ass lappie for the purpose of research. ("Research," yeah...) There's a couple of legitimate reasons for going through with this. Main one was and still isthat STD (the English honors society) is having its convention in New Orleans this year (and by that I mean the beginning of 2012, straddling the last week of February and the first week of March--so it's in the Mardi Gras season, but not quite when the city gets flooded with drunk youngsters pissin' everywhere; I think I might be okay with that), and I plan on going. I submitted two papers, one a critical essay on Tennyson's "Ulysses" and the other a memoir piece, with the potential of one of those being selected to present at the convention. But even if I wind up presenting nothing--Dude, it's fucking New Orleans. I've wanted to go to New Orleans ever since the days when Mom was gobbling up the $4 Anne Rice hardcovers at Hastings and stoying them away as gifts for a few Christmases and birthdays. When Katrina was getting ready to hit and everyone was watching the levees, I said, in all my magnanimity, They can't break yet, I haven't visited yet. So, yeah, New Orleans!
And if the city alone weren't enough, one of the speakers this year will be Naomi Shihab Nye. In my adolescence I think the two books I re/read most were Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, and Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye, which--and I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say this--I accredit with helping develop some of the worldviews I still hold today. (Elaboration: the book's about a Palestinian-American family in Saint Louis that moves back to Ramallah, and the girl protagonist makes friends with a Jewish boy. A lot of the book's made up of these little eclectic chapters that contribute but aren't necessarily essential to the linear story, and are neat little stories in themselves. It's really good, read it.) There'll be some other people speaking too of course, but even if I didn't go see any of them, I feel compelled to go listen to her.
And if New Orleans and Naomi Shihab Nye weren't enough, dude: the convention's in late February/early March, when Deep Winter's sinking in its teeth up here. Yes, I would very much like an excuse to leave town for a week and go somewhere warm.
--So, I at least needed Internet access to arrange travel accommodations down there and shit like that, and while I'm down there surrounded by all these writers and readers and shit, maybe it'd be beneficial to have something I could work on, et cetera... So a month and a half of contemplations, arranging to do this, blahblahblah--today I drove out to the Mexican Walmart in Kansas and bought the second-cheapest laptop they had in stock (the cheapest one didn't have a harddrive). I also needed by gets some thermals and bras that aren't warped to shit and made of suck, otherwise I might have put it off longer haha.
That was about three hours ago, so I'm still playing with it. Mind, I'm still devoted to my desktop, it serves me well for most intents and purposes. Though I did feel less bad when the older lady who helped me in the electronics department told me, after I told her I had never owned a laptop before and was a little clueless, that her two-person house has two laptops and two desktops (she has grandkids that come over, I believe she said).
So yeah, anyway. Autumn's having to modernize a bit, feign pace with the rest of the world I guess. Other things that've been going on:
I'm still working two parttime jobs, the car wash is my main one but it's been kind of sloooow... business really picked up wintertime last year, so all of us there are waiting for it to snow and hope that brings in more cars (and ideally, more tips; there were days there last winter I'd work with three or four other guys, and still come home with over a hundred dollars in pocket after splitting up the tips). And the supplementary one is the bookstore, I've been working 3-5 hour stints there a few days a week for the past few weeks, and the semester's drawing to a close, which means buyback's coming into vogue so I'll be doing slightly longer stints there at least for a couple of more weeks. Between the two, presuming it's not slow enough that I get cut anywhere or what not, I manage to rake in 35-40 hours, and it helps that one of the jobs comes with tips, so I manage. I have been thinking about trying to branch out and find a job or maybe an internship more affiliated with what I went to school for, but I also acknowledge that this winter--this month, particularly--I'm gonna be dropping some cash (such as today; and sometime this week I still have to get a new battery because that's taken to harrassing my car something annoying, ugh), so I'm gonna be grateful for the jobs I got right now. Doesn't necessarily mean I won't be keeping an eye out, of course--and of course, it helps that both my bosses wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch if they knew that, either *shrug*
Other than that, there're new people in the house. Crecia, the head roommate who was running the house when I moved in, has moved out and handed over control of the house to one of her business partners (they co-own a bar), Sergio. He got rid of my other two male roommates (tardy rent-payers, at least one of them left without paying his last month at all; Sergio took the DVDs he didn't move out in time as compensation, haha) and moved himself and his friend Ramsey in. A lot of their work is bar-related so we tend to keep slightly different hours, and a lot of the time I see more of Sergio's dog than either of them, but that's fine. The dog's name is Chewy (guess what he does?), he's a white pit bull/Dalmation mix, and he looks and acts a lot like Chance from Homeward Bound -- except more white, I guess. Best thing about him is that he's like what would happen if you put a cat's brain in a pit's body; Thanksgiving morning I was talking to my sister then my uncle on the phone, and most of that time I didn't realize me and Chewy were playing the "chase the fairy" game: the sunlight was reflecting off of one of my rings, and Chewy kept pouncing the light beam on the carpet, essentially repetitively headbutting my floor. He's also good as a warm body, as our heater's currently busted and we've all been keeping toasty on the second floor with space heaters (which work, I just gotta take care not to dry my skin out too badly).
And with less access to dicking around on the Internet, I have been writing more of various things. I've actually got a couple of things done and set to post anytime I want now. Just not now now, because they're on the desktop and like I said, I'm still playing.
Background: bout a month and a half ago, my beloved, mostly-faithful desktop decided it was done, now and forever apparently, picking up my house's network on its wireless adapter. I spent a couple of weeks researching on my sister's and boss's computers trying to figure out what was up, then a bit of time with the Internet guys, the router guys, and the adapter guys, who all basically concluded what I had already. Anyway, I think the adapter would pick up the Interwebz in the future, in another house on another router - though of course that helps little for my current situation, eh?
So I figured I'd cave, and get a cheap-ass lappie for the purpose of research. ("Research," yeah...) There's a couple of legitimate reasons for going through with this. Main one was and still isthat STD (the English honors society) is having its convention in New Orleans this year (and by that I mean the beginning of 2012, straddling the last week of February and the first week of March--so it's in the Mardi Gras season, but not quite when the city gets flooded with drunk youngsters pissin' everywhere; I think I might be okay with that), and I plan on going. I submitted two papers, one a critical essay on Tennyson's "Ulysses" and the other a memoir piece, with the potential of one of those being selected to present at the convention. But even if I wind up presenting nothing--Dude, it's fucking New Orleans. I've wanted to go to New Orleans ever since the days when Mom was gobbling up the $4 Anne Rice hardcovers at Hastings and stoying them away as gifts for a few Christmases and birthdays. When Katrina was getting ready to hit and everyone was watching the levees, I said, in all my magnanimity, They can't break yet, I haven't visited yet. So, yeah, New Orleans!
And if the city alone weren't enough, one of the speakers this year will be Naomi Shihab Nye. In my adolescence I think the two books I re/read most were Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, and Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye, which--and I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say this--I accredit with helping develop some of the worldviews I still hold today. (Elaboration: the book's about a Palestinian-American family in Saint Louis that moves back to Ramallah, and the girl protagonist makes friends with a Jewish boy. A lot of the book's made up of these little eclectic chapters that contribute but aren't necessarily essential to the linear story, and are neat little stories in themselves. It's really good, read it.) There'll be some other people speaking too of course, but even if I didn't go see any of them, I feel compelled to go listen to her.
And if New Orleans and Naomi Shihab Nye weren't enough, dude: the convention's in late February/early March, when Deep Winter's sinking in its teeth up here. Yes, I would very much like an excuse to leave town for a week and go somewhere warm.
--So, I at least needed Internet access to arrange travel accommodations down there and shit like that, and while I'm down there surrounded by all these writers and readers and shit, maybe it'd be beneficial to have something I could work on, et cetera... So a month and a half of contemplations, arranging to do this, blahblahblah--today I drove out to the Mexican Walmart in Kansas and bought the second-cheapest laptop they had in stock (the cheapest one didn't have a harddrive). I also needed by gets some thermals and bras that aren't warped to shit and made of suck, otherwise I might have put it off longer haha.
That was about three hours ago, so I'm still playing with it. Mind, I'm still devoted to my desktop, it serves me well for most intents and purposes. Though I did feel less bad when the older lady who helped me in the electronics department told me, after I told her I had never owned a laptop before and was a little clueless, that her two-person house has two laptops and two desktops (she has grandkids that come over, I believe she said).
So yeah, anyway. Autumn's having to modernize a bit, feign pace with the rest of the world I guess. Other things that've been going on:
I'm still working two parttime jobs, the car wash is my main one but it's been kind of sloooow... business really picked up wintertime last year, so all of us there are waiting for it to snow and hope that brings in more cars (and ideally, more tips; there were days there last winter I'd work with three or four other guys, and still come home with over a hundred dollars in pocket after splitting up the tips). And the supplementary one is the bookstore, I've been working 3-5 hour stints there a few days a week for the past few weeks, and the semester's drawing to a close, which means buyback's coming into vogue so I'll be doing slightly longer stints there at least for a couple of more weeks. Between the two, presuming it's not slow enough that I get cut anywhere or what not, I manage to rake in 35-40 hours, and it helps that one of the jobs comes with tips, so I manage. I have been thinking about trying to branch out and find a job or maybe an internship more affiliated with what I went to school for, but I also acknowledge that this winter--this month, particularly--I'm gonna be dropping some cash (such as today; and sometime this week I still have to get a new battery because that's taken to harrassing my car something annoying, ugh), so I'm gonna be grateful for the jobs I got right now. Doesn't necessarily mean I won't be keeping an eye out, of course--and of course, it helps that both my bosses wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch if they knew that, either *shrug*
Other than that, there're new people in the house. Crecia, the head roommate who was running the house when I moved in, has moved out and handed over control of the house to one of her business partners (they co-own a bar), Sergio. He got rid of my other two male roommates (tardy rent-payers, at least one of them left without paying his last month at all; Sergio took the DVDs he didn't move out in time as compensation, haha) and moved himself and his friend Ramsey in. A lot of their work is bar-related so we tend to keep slightly different hours, and a lot of the time I see more of Sergio's dog than either of them, but that's fine. The dog's name is Chewy (guess what he does?), he's a white pit bull/Dalmation mix, and he looks and acts a lot like Chance from Homeward Bound -- except more white, I guess. Best thing about him is that he's like what would happen if you put a cat's brain in a pit's body; Thanksgiving morning I was talking to my sister then my uncle on the phone, and most of that time I didn't realize me and Chewy were playing the "chase the fairy" game: the sunlight was reflecting off of one of my rings, and Chewy kept pouncing the light beam on the carpet, essentially repetitively headbutting my floor. He's also good as a warm body, as our heater's currently busted and we've all been keeping toasty on the second floor with space heaters (which work, I just gotta take care not to dry my skin out too badly).
And with less access to dicking around on the Internet, I have been writing more of various things. I've actually got a couple of things done and set to post anytime I want now. Just not now now, because they're on the desktop and like I said, I'm still playing.