Wrath of the Titan, Part II

So here we are, as of Friday afternoon.

Early predictions, obviously, and the second picture is older than the first by several hours, but you get the idea. The Weather Channel updated its "Winter Storm Watch" forecast this morning, but in doing so only removed the threat of an ice storm (which, for a while, is what they were expecting more than anything else). Now it's all snow predicted for the area, and they're sticking with the original projections of 5-6 inches. JD Rudd, as you can see above, is guessing more than that will hit the KC area depending on the track of the storm -- which could easily change slightly and give me that much as well. Whatever the case, it looks like it's going to be a pretty major snow event here in Kansas, and I'm glad I don't have to leave the house during it. I'll put my car in the garage this afternoon when I go downstairs to clean out the cat box/room.

Obviously everything could change course, as these storms often do, and it's possible the forecast could get better or worse. I contemplated ordering pizza, as that's usually my go-to way to have fresh, more interesting food in the house when a snowstorm is about to hit, but eh. I may. I may not. While I have the spare cash to do so, I don't really need it, and I can't completely justify pizza when I don't really want it right now. My decision on this may change within the next few hours or the next day or so, especially if the forecast changes for the worse. I do have food in the house, food that is easy to make and food that I can cook, but eh. Depends on how I feel later, I suppose.

Daisy has been spending the morning hours finishing up the wedding invitation, as she plans to send them out today. I've seen three different drafts of it thus far, and it's very sweet -- and very Daisy. What I mean by that is that it's done in her style with her design strategies and sensibilities, and she does have a flair for that sort of thing. She's already gotten the stamps to mail all of them (even the international stamps, for the ones she has to mail to family in Canada), and once they're printed, they can go out. She's mailing about 80 or so of them total, and the remaining ones will be hand-delivered to my friends and colleagues in and around the department to save postage. No, I'm not going to post the invite here, for obvious reasons. Duh.

As an aside, I've been pondering over what I'm going to do with this blog as we count down to the wedding. A lot of the details of the wedding itself are shrouded in secrecy in order to be able to surprise our family and friends (read: so that I don't beat it into the ground and reveal every detail about it here before it happens, since if I do that what would be the reason for said family and friends to attend?), and the remainder of the details involved aren't public details, but things that Daisy and I, as well as our families, are working on in the background (budgeting stuff, decorating stuff, etc). I'll probably go into "radio silence" on the wedding stuff after a while, as all of it comes together and becomes settled. Suffice it to say that it's in the summer, and if you need to know the details about it, you already do. I don't think much more needs to be said, really.

So, she's been working on the invite and has already done and re-done it a few times to make it as perfect as she can -- because since she wanted to do it, she wants to be an absolute perfectionist about it. This is one of those processes that I basically just stay out of and give her the "thumbs up of approval" on it when she's done, similar to the decorating of the venue, the table centerpieces, the flowers, the catering, the photography, etc. A lot of those are "bridal" responsibilities, if only because if I chose to take care of a lot of that stuff nobody would be happy with my decisions -- I am a stark minimalist. I'd cut corners, I'd trim out everything I didn't deem absolutely necessary, I'd crowdsource the wedding photos, etc. Because Daisy has a much, much different sensibility on a lot of those things compared to me, I stand back and let her do what she wants with it, as a wedding is usually considered to be the most important day in a woman's life. I'll offer feedback and my thoughts when necessary or when asked, but for the most part, I stay out of all of it and hide in the proverbial corner so as not to start a fight about something. Daisy's mother did stuff for Daisy's older sisters' weddings, and Daisy was in those two weddings herself, and has attended many others -- I haven't been to, or involved with, a wedding of any sort since my brother got married...what, sixteen? seventeen years ago now? Something like that.

The other part of it -- and I told Daisy this -- is twofold. One, I already see her as my wife. The glitz-and-glamour show of the wedding is, really, just a formality. Two, I just want to do it and get it done and over with so all of us can stop fretting about it or working on stuff for it. I know how stressful it is for her, as well as everyone else involved, to keep planning and planning and to keep coming across issues or things we've forgotten that we have to throw money at to solve the problem. I secretly just want to go to the courthouse and get married quietly a week before the real wedding, get all dressed up on the wedding day, and instead of performing a ceremony, turn around and say "SURPRISE, bitches! We did it last week! LET'S DANCE AND GET DRUNK WOOOOOO" and then strobe lights kick on, house music starts pumping, and the venue becomes a rave.

...but, of course, that's not gonna happen.

Anyway.

This morning, when Sadie was sitting on my lap, she slipped and had to jump off. My hand was on my thigh beneath her, and when she slipped, she instinctively dug in with her claws...right into the nail bed of my left middle finger. Deep. And diagonally. Oww. 

She didn't mean to do it, of course, but it totally hurt like hell and bled for about five minutes. I had to clean it out with an alcohol-dipped Q-Tip, and it's still sore -- especially as it's one of my primary typing fingers. On the downside, this also means that when I'm making batches of jerky this weekend (I started one this morning) that I can only use one hand to handle the raw meat as it goes into the dehydrator. Oh well. I tend to heal quickly from stuff like this without any real issue. I may have a shitty immune system in the winter when it comes to sinus infections and allergies, but cuts/wounds/etc I heal remarkably fast.

That is, unless said wound is in the eye, and is caused by a rogue pineapple.

Daisy works tonight, but she has a new schedule on Fridays (as I've probably mentioned before) -- she goes in later and then stays late in the morning to train new hires, since she knows the ins and outs of the system fully at this point, and they don't get a whole lot of quality training otherwise. I, meanwhile, have no real plans -- I will probably put off drafting out my taxes until tomorrow, as I'm tired and once again didn't sleep that well last night, and I need to be able to focus and be at 100% when I mess with that stuff. Today is my payday, but as it won't clear my account until tomorrow (and I don't pay any bills or write any checks until that money is IN THERE), I don't have anything to do regarding that, either. I'll more than likely just do my minor cleaning that I have to do, put the car in the garage, shower, eat something, and go back to bed. Daisy will be asleep after she finishes the invitations anyhow, so it's not like I'll miss any time I'd normally be spending with her.

As for the snow, I'll update you on anything else I hear, as the forecast will probably keep changing between now and when it hits. I'm not exactly looking forward to it either way, but eh.

Wrath of the Titan, Part I

(because, come on, it's not like you didn't see that title coming.)

Spring semester: day twenty-nine

I drove back to Newton after my class yesterday, stopped at Walmart to get my necessary groceries (read: not a whole lot, but some stuff I needed) and told Daisy I was home safely before eating a quick lunch and going back to bed...around 1:30 or so. At the latest. While my workshop sessions with my students took almost the whole class period, I also didn't waste any time getting off campus and back up here, and the shopping trip was a relatively quick one. I was tired. I didn't want to waste any time -- in, out, get home, eat, go to bed.

When I awoke around 7PM or so (roughly; I don't exactly remember the time except that it was almost completely dark outside by then) I had this picture message from Daisy waiting for me:

Ah, so they finally made a prediction.

And, of course, I was immediately glad that I'd done my grocery shopping on my way home from class.

Winter Storm Titan, as they are calling it, is shaping up to be a big one. I've read several forecasts at this point, and all of them are saying at least 3-6 inches of snow, but all of them are also advising that the forecast can and probably will be adjusted/changed between now and Saturday night when this shit is supposed to start.

Again, I'll remind you that I don't have anything to do or anywhere to be this weekend -- I plan to do my taxes today or tomorrow, and I plan to sleep, make minor lesson plans, and play Pokemon X over the rest of the weekend. That's it, really. There's nothing else on my schedule.

When I mentioned the possibility of snow to the West campus administrator yesterday morning, she shrugged and said, with a smirk, "Hey, I wouldn't mind the university closing down on Monday. I'd be happy to sleep in again."

The university has been quite a bit more cautious in the past two or three years when it comes to weather. When I first started there as a grad student in 2010, five or six inches of snow wouldn't close the school. There was a major ice storm in spring 2011 that hit in the midday hours in the middle of the week, and despite hundreds of accidents all around the campus and town, all they did was cancel evening classes that day...despite the fact that the roads were basically impassible and about 1/3 of the city didn't have power. Since then, however, we've had two different university presidents and numerous administration changes in the offices of the higher-ups, and they tend to take weather threats more seriously, apparently -- in spring 2012, there was a two-foot snowstorm (roughly, anyway) that closed down the university for the better part of a week, a year ago this week we had a storm of about fifteen inches or so that did the same, and then earlier this month we had the storm (Nika) that shut us down for two days.  So, yes, it does happen -- there's a precedent for it.

The bad part about this storm, however, is all about timing. At least for me, anyway. No, it doesn't affect any weekend plans I have, and it won't affect me in the least if the university shuts down on Monday (I don't teach on Mondays), but...if it lingers longer than Sunday night, when it's apparently supposed to stop, and if it screws up Tuesday and/or they can't clean the roads off enough for me to get to my classes and back on Tuesday, my class schedule for most of March gets thrown into mass hysteria. As I mentioned here before, I don't have anything to do this weekend because all of my students' next papers/assignments come in next week. I then cover some topics in my classes that will lead them into starting their next assignments over Spring Break, which is important -- I can't rush into those things, and I also can't not assign their next papers/assignments before the break. The second half of the semester hinges on me getting their papers on time next week, grading them and giving them back, and then covering the next assignment as I send them off into the break so that they have time to work on it, as for two of my three classes that next assignment is a biiiiiig one. Missing any absolutely unnecessary days -- whether it be with the university closing down or because I can't physically get to/from campus in the arctic tundra Kansas turns into when it snows -- would be disastrous to my overall lesson plans for the rest of the semester, and I'd basically have to rewrite a huge chunk of them for at least two of my three classes just to be able to fit everything in.

This is not, obviously, something I want to do. I don't think it's something I'll have to do either, but the way they're waffling back and forth trying to track this storm even 36 hours or so before it hits has me a bit worried about my return to teaching on Tuesday, especially if this storm goes into the late hours of Sunday night and into Monday morning (as they're currently saying is possible).

I did not put the car in the garage yesterday afternoon upon my return home, though that was more me being absentminded and just forgetting to do so more than anything else. It turns out I didn't need to, at least not for the overnight hours (I'm writing this at 2AM); they'd originally predicted that we'd be getting sleet and in the overnight hours, and well, it's 37 degrees outside and there's nothing on the radar aside from very light showers anywhere within 200 miles of me. This goes to show you how quickly those forecasts can change and/or become inaccurate, which is why when a big storm comes in -- like Titan -- I pay damned close attention if it may affect me in any way. I'll put the car in the garage during the day today sometime, more than likely.

Obviously, once the forecasts change, of course, I will be updating you with what I find out -- as I tend to do that (and, again, have little else going on this weekend).

While shopping yesterday, I purchased supplies to make jerky this weekend in the dehydrator, as I've been wanting some (and because I have a little more money to work with right now, for the moment). I'll start that in the morning, after I clean the kitchen, so that I can have something to snack on over the course of the next several days. I've done some cooking, I've done some cleaning, and I've even washed the bedsheets and blankets. I'll have to do my normal household chores, of course, regardless of whether it snows or not. On the plus side, it'll keep me busy over a weekend I'd normally be grading and/or running errands back and forth. My electric bill did come in the mail yesterday, and it's (as expected) quite high again -- $212. I'll pay it in a couple of days once my paycheck clears just so I can be rid of it and not have it hanging over my head. Hopefully, after this storm rolls through, we'll be done with this cold and snow shit and spring can finally arrive -- and with it, the ability to turn off the furnace and drop my electric bill by about $130 or so for next month.

My sinus infection seems to be clearing up and going away, though my normal allergies persist as per the usual. They'll probably (expectedly) ramp up as this storm system rolls in, as they tend to knock me flat when this sort of thing happens. That's another reason I'm glad I have a relatively free weekend.

For now, though? All I can do is wait and see what the updated forecasts say 12-18 hours from now. Maybe it'll turn out to be nothing. Maybe it'll be worse. Regardless, I'm going back to bed and won't be worrying about it while I'm sleeping with the kitties and the electric blanket.

Interesting, Part II

Spring semester: day twenty-eight

The weather forecast for the weekend is not looking good. It was updated while I slept (shortly) last night; a weaker system with sleet/ice is coming through tonight, apparently, and then the temperatures will plummet again (as in, below zero) as this storm predicted -- now for Saturday night and Sunday -- drops "measurable, plowable" snow on us. How much? Nobody will say yet. I haven't seen a single accumulation prediction model yet, though I would assume they'll tell us by tomorrow or Saturday, obviously.

Again, it doesn't affect me much at all unless they don't clear off the roads by Tuesday morning, but it's fascinating to see the development of storm systems and to follow them from beginning to end. Daisy calls me a weather nerd, and (generally speaking) she's right in that regard. Also, following the weather is about the only somewhat exciting thing to do here in Kansas. It's not like Newton has a jumpin', swingin' nightlife when the town is populated primarily by senior citizens and we have one of the largest small-town police forces I've seen anywhere. We don't even have a Kmart.

Since I don't have anywhere to go and have very little of consequence to do this weekend, my plans are to stop at Walmart on the way home from teaching this morning (to get the groceries I need for the next week or two), then to put the car in the garage, eat something, and go back to bed. I told Daisy last night that this was my plan of action for the day, and I'll probably end up sticking pretty closely to it. This morning's 102 class will be simple, though it won't necessarily be short -- it's their workshop day, and we have four copies to go through. It will probably take most of our class time because of that. Of course, I always tend to look forward to the end of class on Thursdays, because once that class ends, my weekend begins.

I'm wearing most of the same clothing I wore to teach last night, with the exceptions that I've changed shoes and pants (the pants I'd been wearing, one of Dad's pairs of pants, need to be washed). I'm wearing the same shirt and hooded sweatshirt simply because of laziness, because I didn't see anyone last night who will see me this morning, and well, because it's so cold that I don't want to freeze for three minutes if I were to take them off to change into something else. I have nobody to impress on Thursday mornings; I see my students and the West campus administrator, and that's it.

I did have to brush all of the snow off the back of my car last night before leaving to teach, though everywhere else that the sun touched yesterday melted everything off. My car, when it's parked in my driveway, is almost perpetually in the shade (at least in the winter, anyway). The bonus of this is that it never gets to be super-hot inside it in the summer when it's parked there, but the drawback is that when it snows, if I leave it outside, I always have to clear all the snow off of it (at least the back half of it, anyway).

As mentioned above, it is again very cold this morning; the temperature on my weather app says it's 18 outside and feels like 6. I believe it; it's pretty cold in the house right now, despite the fact that I've cranked the furnace up a lot higher than usual to make it warmer in here. I will, of course, turn it back down when I leave. I didn't get my electric bill yesterday, but I do know it's coming; it can't be that far off. And with the cold snaps we've been having I doubt that it'll be much lower than last month's bill. On the plus side, with the larger than expected paycheck I'll get tomorrow, I'll be able to pay it without waiting several weeks to get enough money in my bank account. I told Daisy last night that it will also be nice to go to Walmart today and actually be able to get some of the stuff I need without fretting and trying to budget and re-budget everything before I get up to the cash register, or looking at my list and saying to myself nope, can't afford that today, so it'll have to wait.

Last night's 210 class was a blast. I've mentioned before that I love teaching English 210 because it's a really straightforward, easy class to teach -- the drawback of it, of course, is that the class can be really, really boring if it's full of uptight and/or stiff students with no sense of fun or humor. The class I have this semester is wonderful; there are eight of them, all of them are vocal, do the work and have fun with it, understand the lessons I'm teaching, and if they have questions, they ask them. They don't give me shit, they don't make excuses as to why their work can't be turned in on time, and they are all generally fun students to teach. Because of that, and because of the unique way the class is structured as a once-a-week night class, I can play it loose with the assignments and the scheduling, and I can have fun. I could do that last semester in my 210 class as well, but that class had twenty students and it was an eight-week course, so the assignments came one after another, one after another, all the way through those eight weeks while some of them struggled to keep up.

Last night was one of the best classes of my teaching career. They're working on their Public Service Announcement assignment, and I told them to be creative and to have fun with it as long as they fulfill the requirements of the assignment itself. To those ends, I have students writing PSAs about orc attacks, zombie survival advice, and "beavers: grizzly bears of the lake." Not kidding, folks. I like this; I appreciate creativity, of course, and as long as they're hitting the beats and are fulfilling those assignment requirements, I do encourage them to have fun with it. The rest of the assignments in the class are rather boring for the most part, even though I do everything I can to keep the class fun and high-energy. The textbooks are even more boring, to be honest with you, and they don't tend to help much with the assignments at hand -- a lot of the stuff in them is "no shit," common-sense advice on business writing. Some of the assignments in the class (well, at least one of them) aren't even in the 210 books; the lesson plan I have and use, and have modified slightly over the past year, has a resume and cover letter assignment on it -- that's not in the workbook or list of assignments for the class, but it has been incorporated into the lesson plans of basically everyone who's taught 210 over the course of the past few years, without any of us really knowing who originated said assignment. I use it personally to take the place of reading/homework assignments and quizzes, because it gives them a useful skill as well as keeps me from having to type up and make copies of quizzes and homework assignments for them, let alone grade said assignments and quizzes.

The PSA assignments come in next week (last night we went through drafts and did mock presentations), and I told my students to keep an eye on the weather over the weekend, since at this point who knows when/if/how much snow we'll get with this storm. The university, over the past few years, has become a lot more serious and pre-emptively cautious when it comes to closing down for bad weather, so if we get a ton of snow on Sunday it wouldn't surprise me if they were to shut down on Monday. Again, it won't and/or shouldn't affect me or my classes I'm teaching, but still. Given the road conditions a full four or five days after the last storm, I'm watching everything with a careful eye.

So, that's my day. Teaching this morning, going to Walmart, coming home, eating something, and then probably going to bed shortly thereafter. I haven't eaten anything since early yesterday afternoon -- I wasn't hungry when I got home last night, so I talked to Daisy for a bit, answered a few student emails, and went directly to bed. This means that by the time I return to the house in about, oh, four hours or so, I will more than likely be famished. I'm already sort of hungry, but after only getting about four hours of quality rest last night, if I eat something before I go to teach it will just make me want to immediately go back to bed -- and, obviously, that's a bad thing.

Interesting...

Spring semester: day twenty-seven

I once more live in an arctic tundra. For the moment, anyway.

Last night, right before I went to bed, it began snowing. Really hard snowing. I'm talking big, fluffy flakes whipped by the wind coming down so quickly I could barely see the houses across the street from me. I actually went outside and stood in the driveway next to the car just to watch it, because it was like a scene out of a natural disaster movie.

It stuck, of course; it didn't get out of the 20s yesterday, and being out in the cold for my long day of classes was absolutely frigid. It didn't snow at all during the day; it waited until the night after I got home (thankfully). The snow piled up quickly, covering everything -- including my car, which I left out because the Weather Channel only called for a "dusting" or "flurries." No, we got about an inch and a half, and I will have to brush all of the white fluffy shit off of my car before I go to teach my 210 class tonight. That is, if it doesn't melt first. It's supposed to be 38 today, though right now it's only 19 (and it was 12 when I got up). It's cold. This time last week I was contemplating wearing shorts. Today I'm pondering how many layers I'll have to wear tonight when I leave the house to go teach.

Yesterday's classes were okay, I suppose. I mean, it was a long day. Tuesdays are always really long and ponderous for me, as you know. I tend to just put my head down and slog through them, whether I want to or not -- after all, it is my job. I collected workshop copies from my 102 students, returned papers to my 011 students, and then came home. Well, that's the short version of it, anyway. The long version includes me sitting in my office on main campus for most of the day, freezing because the heat on the top floor of the building isn't that great when said building is surrounded by windows that I'm pretty sure are drafty, and trying to get my nine-year-old laptop to stay online long enough on the terribly shitty wireless there to even download and install updates to the OS (read: impossible). During this time I also graded through papers and edited through workshop copies for tomorrow, drinking most of a pot of coffee to stay awake.

When I was done, I rewarded myself with about an hour of Pokemon X time, as I'd brought my 2DS with me to campus, knowing that I'd probably be bored at some point during the day.

Most of the department -- or at least most of my friends and colleagues, however -- were gone. AWP starts this week (today, actually, if I'm not mistaken). It's the big writers' conference that a ton of us always go to. This year it's in Seattle, and a large chunk of the GTAs and even some of the full-time faculty/professors are gone to it. I've never gone to it, not even when I was a student, because I could never justify just up and leaving my classes for a week and spending $1k or so on a plane ticket and hotel accommodations just to go to a conference to see a bunch of writers I generally had no interest in. It always just seemed like a big waste of time and money to me. And you know me, anyhow -- I don't like to travel if I can avoid it. I'd rather stay at home and sleep in my downtime. I'd rather not have to leave the confines of my bathrobe for three days at a time, or go get drunk in unfamiliar cities. That's just me. What most other people find "fun" or "exciting" just bores me, or I have no interest in it whatsoever.

So, because most of my friends and colleagues (with a few exceptions) were gone to AWP, the department was really quiet. I hung out with a few friends for a bit, but not for that long, as I had the aforementioned work to do in the afternoon. I will say that it took all of my willpower (and sheer laziness) to not cancel my night class and go home. I was so tired and rather grumpy all day, grumpy just because I haaaaate Tuesdays and hate being stuck there so long, especially when it was so incredibly balls-chillingly cold outside with the wind. Every time I went downstairs to smoke, I couldn't feel my fingers for about five or ten minutes after I came back inside. It made me miserable. For someone like me, with my personality, habits, and quirks, it is simply maddening to me not to be able to do my work with an ashtray next to me on whatever desk I'm sitting at, and it drives me nuts that when I'm at the office I just can't light up whenever I want or need to due to those things called "laws" and other issues such as "Brandon really can't afford to be fired from his job." That just adds to the feeling of being trapped there for twelve hours straight on Tuesdays.

Again, I'm not complaining about my teaching schedule -- I like that I don't have to go teach again until tonight, and I like that after I teach tomorrow morning, my weekend starts all over again. I love that I have what is, essentially, a two-and-a-half-day work week spread over three days. Right now it's just the weather, the cold, the no-fun-ness of it all that's really bogging me down. When it's 70-75 every day and in the 60s every morning when I leave the house, when I can wear shorts and comfortable clothing/shoes when I go outside instead of needing to dress in at least three or four layers so that I don't go through my day being unable to stay warm, and when warm spring raindrops replace biting wind and snowstorms every other week, I'll be much happier with my situation.

Speaking of which, there's supposed to be another snowstorm here this weekend. Well, two snowstorms, really. No, that's not a joke.

The first is supposed to be minor -- mostly freezing rain, ice, sleet, etc for my area. That one's supposed to hit tomorrow night into Friday, before it warms up enough on Friday to melt most of it off -- so, really, I'm not concerned with that. I'll put the car in the garage when I get home tomorrow from class, and I won't have to deal with it -- in fact, I'll probably sleep through all of it. 24 hours from now will be 2PM on a Thursday afternoon. If I haven't gone back to bed by that time tomorrow I'll more than likely be on my way to bed shortly thereafter.

The second storm hits Sunday morning (approximately, anyway). They don't know snow totals or have any predictions of any sort yet since it's still several days out, but if they're predicting it at all this far in advance, it's going to do one of two things -- either miss us completely and do nothing, or completely smack us with another huge snowstorm. Out here, there's really no middle ground when they predict something this far in advance.

Again, I really don't care what happens one way or the other, because I don't have anywhere to go or anything pressing to do this weekend anyhow. As mentioned previously, I plan to do my taxes -- as banal a task as someone could ask for. So, let the damn snow hit us again if it has to. Fuck it. Don't care. The only thing that concerns me about the snow is all of my friends flying back home from AWP and the conditions of the roads by 8AM Tuesday morning.

So. Anyway. Switching gears.

This morning, I awoke to an automated email from payroll informing me that my electronic pay stub for Friday was available for viewing. This is not out of the ordinary; every Wednesday before a payday, everyone gets that email. We can login and view our pay stub details electronically because we do not get a paper stub -- it's all direct deposit, obviously. For me, it's the first direct deposit check I've gotten all semester, as payroll has my stuff righted and fixed now. So, curious as to how tightly I would have to budget things between now and Spring Break, I logged in and looked.

...only to find that my paycheck was more than double what I was expecting.

Hm, now that can't be right, I thought.

I looked through the deductions. Everything was there, and everything was correct. In fact, even the recouped amount of the advance check was there and had been taken off correctly. I calculated and recalculated the math, the differences in taxes, the pay split up over this as well as the remaining pay periods of the semester, and...well, it checks out. All of it. And then I remembered what the payroll lady had told me:

What you will be paid for on the 2/28 check is three gross checks in one payment. I have reviewed what your taxes should have been for each of your 9 checks and will index these on your 2/28 check so that you will be paying the correct amount of taxes for what you should have been paid. I will recover the partial advance that I have written for you from the 2/28 check -- so in total you will be receiving just what you should have received if you had received all 3 checks individually.

Basically? I got three checks on this pay stub, minus 1.5 checks (the advance) and minus taxes from all three = the amount I will get paid on Friday. And it's much more than I was expecting.

Again, the math checks out after I went back and read through all of it. It all makes sense. It's set up pretty plainly now that I can see all the figures.

After Friday's check, my pay goes back to normal with every check forward; it may be a little less or a little more for the remainder of the semester, depending on how much taxes are any given singular pay period (since I haven't seen that yet) but I should, roughly, be getting paid what I was last semester. And the bonus here is that I don't have to worry about budgeting incredibly tightly for everything anymore. I still have to budget, yes, but it's not sacrifice X to be able to eat, sacrifice Y to be able to pay the electric bill sort of budgeting anymore. And that's good. Especially since I'll probably get the electric bill today or tomorrow.

So, there's that. I'm now really tired, actually. I thought getting a hot shower would help, as that usually will wake me up more depending on the time of day (hence why I don't take showers before bed most of the time) but it just seemed to weaken me more. I had a sneezing fit earlier, where I sneezed six or seven times, and my nose feels all tickly and itchy, like I inhaled pepper or something. This is usually the sign of a sinus infection, which I already know I have on the other side of my nose (hence why I've been blowing bright, neon-yellow snot out of said nostril for three days now), though not one of the bad sinus infections that end up basically crippling me with pressure and pain. This one's purely allergy-based, I'm guessing, as I was perfectly fine until the weather started flip-flopping again. Daisy advised me to drink water and take allergy meds, which I have done, though again, all of this is going to plague me until Kansas picks a season and keeps it.

Before getting ready to leave for class tonight, I made some food and reviewed my teaching notes and lesson plans, something that seemed to wake me up a little more, but not by a lot. I didn't sleep well last night. I don't know why, really -- I was exhausted by the time I got home, and I made myself a big dinner of Boca burgers and two bags of steamed vegetables. When I got home, Daisy had already gone to bed -- she had canceled her plans to go out last night because she was too tired, so she went to sleep. I was only up until 1 or so myself before I went downstairs, stood outside in the snow for a few minutes to watch it, then went to sleep. I don't know why I didn't sleep well; I didn't sleep in any different positions or sleep any "weirder" than normal; again, I think it was my allergies more than anything else. I slept until only 8:30 AM or so before I woke up and could not sleep any more. As I'll probably get home around 8:30 tonight, this isn't a huge problem -- I could feasibly just get a bite of something to eat and then go to bed. I made curry couscous this afternoon and only ate a little of it, so I could just finish that and pass out if I really wanted to. I mean, I've already showered, and all of my work for my morning class tomorrow is done. If I'm tired, I may just sleep. I may as well -- Daisy said she's going to some aquatic zumba class tonight anyway.

So that's been my day thus far. Time to go teach and then probably come home and sleep.

The Poorhouse

Spring semester: day twenty-six

When I was a little kid, I used to hear the phrase "you're gonna send me to the poorhouse" a lot, mostly from older family members and family friends. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't exactly know what it means.

Oh. Okay, that clears it up. Nevermind then.

Anyway.

The way the term was used when I was a kid was, I guess, somewhat similar, though I always imagined it was a place people went to live when they ran out of money and couldn't live at home anymore. I pictured it as a falling-apart wooden shack with a tin roof, or something, I suppose.

I'm not living in the poorhouse, though I do now understand what my (decidedly non-affluent) family members meant when they used the term. I paid my bills and rent on Sunday afternoon, and now only have a bit more in my account than I did before I had my paycheck deposited by my parents earlier this week. It is clear that this semester is going to totally be a "living paycheck-to-paycheck" semester, and I'm absolutely going to have many more grocery-shopping trips in the future which will be financed by my high-limit Discover card. 

I paid $100 on that card, actually, and paid another $100 on my Citi Card. The $100 on the Discover card is a mere drop in the bucket; the $100 on the Citi Card eliminates about 1/3 of the debt on it, give or take a little here or there. I should be able to pay off my other cards in a matter of two or three months, but I'm guessing the Discover card will almost always have a balance, if not a substantial one, for a while. I hate having to live on that card for most of my necessities, but for the moment it can't be helped. Sorry, I've gotta eat.

Aside from that, it's been a pretty quiet, uneventful weekend. I didn't get up until the afternoon on Sunday (which, of course, was my plan anyway) and I made lunch and played a little more Pokemon X before taking out the garbage, running the dishwasher, and cleaning the cat box/cat room. I have to fold and put away my clean laundry sometime, but as for any other work? It's all done. My students' papers are graded and my lesson planning for this week is done, the kitchen and rest of the house is (relatively) clean, the shopping is done, the bills are paid, Daisy worked all night for the past two nights (and is still there right now while I type this), and the car has enough gas in it to where I won't need any more before Wednesday night or maybe even Thursday morning. I am, for the moment -- even though I have my long day of teaching today -- relatively stress-free.

This...this feels good, actually. It feels good to have at least some money in my account, it feels good to have no more monthly bills or rent hanging over my head for the moment, and it feels good to have food in the fridge/pantry that I can cook/make any time I want, however I want it. It feels good that if I want to, I could sit on the couch and play my 2DS all night (when I get home) without feeling guilty that I'm wasting time that could be put to use doing student stuff, or otherwise being productive. I'm even showered and clean, and my hair/beard looks fabulous.

You could always sit down and do your taxes, you might be thinking. And yes, I could. But I've already set aside time next weekend to do those. My next sets of student work, from any/all of my classes, won't come in until March 4 at the earliest, when I collect my 011 students' journals and my 102 students' first papers. I collect my 210 students' next assignments on the 5th. This means that next weekend, the 27th through the 3rd, is completely wide open for me to do whatever I want or need to do, and at least one day of that time will be devoted to me doing my taxes. They'll be a bit more complicated this year because I made more money the second half of the year as an adjunct. Still, they shouldn't be that difficult. I always dread doing my taxes because I'm terrible at math and accounting, and I'm even more terrible at making sure everything's calculated correctly and I'm getting the benefits/tax credits I'm allowed. It's not remarkably hard to do my taxes, or anything like that -- I stress myself out about it too much and end up raising my blood pressure for a few hours while I do it, but when I finish, I'm like "Oh, well, that wasn't that bad." Regardless, next weekend I'll have the time and patience to take care of it.

I wrote before, in my last two posts, that I've had a low-grade headache for the past several days. It comes and goes, and I think it has to do with the weather and my allergies, but it's a pain in the ass. It's also probably sinus-related as well, since it tends to affect me in my sinuses and the places where my sinuses meld with the rest of my head (for lack of a better description). Yesterday it was bothering me in the back of my skull, where the neck meets my head, and my ears have been popping a lot. The weather keeps changing, almost on a daily basis, and it's seriously messing with me. It's supposed to be in the low 50s today, but yesterday it was in the 30s all day and over the past few days, highs have been ranging from the 30s to the 60s. By next weekend, we're supposed to get snow again (though how much, and if it's going to be anything significant, is still too far out to be predicted). Sinus/pain pills help the headache, but I'm guessing that as long as the weather keeps changing almost every day, this headache and the allergy issues that come along with it will remain until, again, Kansas picks a season and sticks with it. My spring allergies tend to be awful until the weather settles down and rights itself. When I showered last night, I blew a big glob of neon-yellow snot out of my nose, which tells me -- to some extent, at least -- that I'm having a low-grade sinus infection again right now.

In other news, Daisy received her new car side mirror over the weekend, and put it on herself on Sunday. I'm proud of her; she ordered a standard mirror that would fit her car (though it doesn't match her car, but that doesn't matter), removed the broken-off pieces, wired it together and snapped it on all by herself, securing it and making sure that it was bolted down and fixed. You know, a lot of people can change a flat tire or even change their own oil, but replacing a side mirror is body work. It's a little more difficult and intricate, especially for someone who's never done it before. I was highly impressed. I love that I'm marrying an intelligent woman who's handy and can do these things. I told her that she was my hero.

Anyway.

In talking to Daisy last night about what our life will be like after marriage, I brought up the fact that I'll definitely need a new car sooner or later -- probably sooner than later. While I love and adore my Monte Carlo, as I've written here many times before, I know that car isn't going to last longer than another year or two at the most -- not with as much as I drive it. Something big will, inevitably, break or blow out on it, and when that happens, I just hope I'm in a good place financially and in our living situation to where it won't completely fuck me. She's been running well; really well over the past few weeks, actually, but for the past year or so I've totally been pushing my luck with that car. I need to get an oil change and coolant flush, I need new air/fuel/oil filters, and it probably needs a transmission flush as well. However, the spark plugs and wires are holding up much better than I was told they would by the auto techs when I got them replaced (for the moment, anyway), and even with almost 232,000 miles, the car is running strong and dependably every day in all weather, good and bad. Still, again, that can't and won't last forever, and I'm really just waiting for the day where I blow the head gasket or when the differential, transmission, water pump, alternator, or anything else goes out, and I'd just be better off getting another vehicle than trying to repair the one I have.

"I don't want a car payment," I told Daisy. "At all. I'd be happy to get a car that was made in the past ten years and has less than 100,000 miles on it. At least I wouldn't have to worry as much about that. I'd even bump that up to fifteen years if said car were a Honda or Subaru, since you can drive those things into the ground and have them still run great."

This is true -- I don't want a new car. Well, I do, but I'll never be able to afford one. I just want to buy a car outright and be done with it, and not have to worry about making payments every month. My bills are enough as it is without adding a car payment to them. But, eventually, I'll have to get something newer and/or more reliable than the Monte Carlo, if only because Daisy and I will eventually have kids and I want said kids to be safe. I also told Daisy that I want a car we can make road trips with -- if we want to take a week or two in the summer to drive back east to visit my family or even her family, I want to be able to do that without worrying the engine is going to blow up on us. If the Monte Carlo were more reliable and/or newer, I would've already done this once or twice during my winter and summer breaks, and I could drive to Omaha basically anytime I wanted to visit Daisy without worrying that it would kill my car.

Daisy's car, of course, is only five years old and is in fantastic shape. The most driving she does with it is when we go back and forth on our visits; otherwise, all she does is drive it to work and back, and around her part of Omaha. Occasionally, she'll make a trip to visit her older sister, a drive of about two hours one-way, but that's it. The drawback with this is that she has car payments, and they're not exactly low monthly car payments either.

I really can't be choosy if I end up having to suddenly get another car; I'll have to get what I can afford, and I'll have to get it quickly -- especially if the Monte Carlo blows up during any given semester that I'm teaching. I remember the days of scouring for cars on Craigslist and finding total clunkers and beaters with tons of problems...and I really don't look forward to needing to do that again. For now, I have to keep my proverbial fingers crossed and hope my luck holds out until Daisy and I are married and are more financially stable, but that really is luck more than anything else.

Which reminds me that I need to pick up more oil and antifreeze the next time I go to Walmart and actually have a bit of money to spare. I don't need either one right this second, but I will within the next month or so, and I'm currently out of both.

I've made a large "shopping list for when I can afford shit again." It contains the things that are too expensive for me to get when I'm on a limited income and/or while I still have to tightly budget my expenses, things like water filters, furnace filters, car stuff (wiper blades, fuel system cleaner, Marvel Mystery Oil), expensive cleaning supplies, cat stuff (like scratch pads and the like), peppermint oil to keep the spiders away, etc. It's all stuff that I normally can't afford when I'm going there on a budget and getting necessities only, as I have been doing for the past two or three months. I'm not sure I'll ever have enough spare cash to get all of it, not even over multiple trips. People don't understand what being poor is truly like until they're in that situation themselves. A lot of the time it means making do, and a lot of the time it means going without. As mentioned above, the only reason I've been able to survive at all over the past few months is because I have credit cards. Without them I'd have no food in the house (at least not food that I personally purchased) or gas in my car.

Today is my long day, of course -- where I'll leave the house in about 90 minutes and will be on both campuses all day long until probably about 9PM or so tonight. In the interim between starting this post yesterday and now, the weather forecast has changed drastically -- it's now supposed to snow here this afternoon and tonight again, at least up here in Newton (north of the city). They're not predicting accumulations or anything, but it's quite possible it could suck just as much as it did driving home in it on Thursday morning, especially since I'll be tired and burnt-out by the time I get home from classes tonight. Again, after Tuesday is over, my week is half-over -- I just teach my Wednesday night 210 class and then my morning 102 class on Thursday, and I'm done. But I totally dread Tuesdays. I always do, because I have to be awake and working all day long, driving between campuses, traveling, walking, teaching twice, grading, etc. It's a long, long day. Thankfully, I have coffee, and even more thankfully, I slept for eleven hours last night -- falling asleep around 6:30 and not getting up until around 5:30 this morning.

My classes today aren't doing a whole lot, really -- I have a short lesson on paraphrasing/summarizing in my 102 class this morning, and I collect their workshop copies (which I'll be going through this afternoon once I get to main campus). In my 011 class tonight, I'll go over about two chapters or so in their big grammar textbook before letting them go. There's a basketball game tonight, but thankfully it's an away game and I don't have to worry about "game traffic" when I get out of there. I just dread the length of the day in general on Tuesdays. There's a lot of downtime where I'm not doing anything, but I just have to be there and awake when I'd much rather be at home sleeping or taking care of stuff around the house.

So that's my day for you. In a few moments I shall get dressed (in layers again, of course, since it's apparently going to be cold enough to snow again) and in a while I shall leave the house to actually do the job I dread so much on Tuesdays.

The Life Allergy

I am exhausted.

I don't know why, really. I mean, I haven't done anything exhausting. The most physical activity I've done in the past two days was go to Walmart last night, and even that only took me about 45 minutes or so at the most.

Still, this afternoon, I couldn't get warm. At all. It was actually warmer outside (62) than it was in the house (54) and it wouldn't get any warmer inside. I couldn't justify running the furnace when it was in the 60s outside, so most of the day (for some reason) I was unnaturally cold and uncomfortable, shivering, fingers cold and numb, the works. It was like I'd just sat outside in freezing temperatures for hours on end. After I graded all of my students' papers -- yes, all of them, in one sitting -- I went back downstairs, turned on the electric blanket, and went to sleep.

My body needed a "reset," apparently. I don't know how to explain it other than that. When I woke up, I was okay. Well, mostly okay, anyhow. I'm still tired. Not like, mentally tired (at least, not really) but physically, I-could-sleep-for-12-more-hours tired. I can't really explain it. I'm not sick; I'm feeling perfectly fine otherwise. I'm just inexplicably exhausted. And thirsty, too -- I must've drank half a gallon of water in the past few hours, though that's probably because I drink too much coffee (which is about the only thing keeping me awake right now).

I got up, made nachos for dinner, and watched two episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which I got the first two seasons of at Walmart last week for $10. I've fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole, there -- getting those two seasons on DVD was a huuuuge mistake, as I now want to watch the entire series...and there are now nine full seasons now. When I really like a show, I almost have to watch it beginning to end. I'm a perfectionist like that. I'm also at least a full season behind on most of the shows I keep up with via DVD releases -- Eastbound & Down, Archer, Breaking Bad (still have the last two seasons of that to watch), etc. As I mentioned, I don't watch TV, I don't have cable television, and I don't have Netflix. DVD sets are how I do it if there's a series I like, because while I do have Amazon Prime and can stream a lot of stuff through there, they don't usually stream the stuff I want to watch and I hate watching things on my computer. Thankfully, there aren't a whole lot of series I do like, so I don't have to devote time and money to a lot of different ones.

Anyway. I'm getting off track.

I feel okay now, I guess. I told Daisy that I think my fatigue and tiredness is my allergies messing with me more than anything else. Again, the warm-again, cold-again weather is brutal on my allergies until Kansas just picks a season and stays within the normal weather for that season. So, basically, for about six months out of the year, I'm just allergic to life -- to being alive. This isn't as bad as Daisy's allergies can get, though. She once asked her doctor what she was allergic to, and said doctor replied "Nebraska." My allergies just make me tired and make my face/head/sinuses hurt...and occasionally give me sinus, ear, or chest infections. Those are relatively rare for me, though.

I've been so tired that I've barely touched the 2DS today. I played it for a little bit this afternoon after I finished grading, and as I was falling asleep. I like it a lot, but it's rather annoying that it almost incessantly needs to be connected to the internet for updates and system upgrades and the like. If you turn off the connectivity feature in a game like Pokemon X, it still plays fine, but the game will bug the shit out of you on the lower screen to turn it back on. The problem with leaving it on all the time is that it drains the battery much faster.

However, it has a Youtube app. It has apps for Netflix and Hulu Plus (which, if I had those, would be awesome). You can buy games for it wirelessly through the eShop, and have said games download right to the system. The first one it suggested for me was Bravely Default, a game that basically everyone with a 2DS/3DS has been telling me to get ASAP, because I apparently have all the time in the world for gaming, right? Permit me to roll my eyes. It's only been with great self-control and great tiredness that I haven't played Pokemon X to the point where I give myself blisters on my fingers, but that's also because of the game itself.

The game itself is fun, yes, but the wholly-redesigned graphics and the 3D-styled character/texture mapping is somewhat of a pain. They perfected their styling of it with Generation V, and now they've completely changed it all around again for Generation VI, making your environment somewhat hard to navigate and hard to see all of it/what's around you. I know I'm missing hidden items simply because the game zooms in on you so closely that you can't see around you anymore. Little things like that frustrate me, as I'd gotten so used to the normal-style Pokemon games. But, again, I'm a nerd, and I'm also very particular.

I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough. The game is fairly long -- I've been playing it for about 6 or 7 hours of in-game time thus far, and I haven't even reached the second badge yet. My team are all around level 25 or so. But, I've caught close to 100 different Pokemon, I'm guessing. The amount of them available to catch, both old and new, is staggering.

Anyway.

I graded my students' papers, as I mentioned above, and for the most part...they were all okay. I had some exceptional papers from each class, of course, as well as some really poor ones, but nothing out of the realm of "usual" amounts for both extremes. I've been doing this teaching thing for a long time, and I can tell by my students' performance whether or not they're "getting" the material and are able to follow directions. For the vast majority of them -- even the international, ESL students in my 011 class -- they seem to get it just fine. I'm more concerned that out of a nineteen-student 011 class, seven of them were absent on Tuesday night and didn't turn in a paper, and of those seven, six of them were those international students. I had to write a post on Blackboard yesterday stating that if you're not in class and don't turn your paper in on its due date...sorry, you get a zero, and you don't get to rewrite it. I wanted to add welcome to college, but I didn't; I didn't want to seem cruel. I have several students in that class who are about to fail outright for absences anyway with another missed class or two. When I did a raise-your-hands survey of the class a few weeks ago, I found that 90% of them can't drop the course and still remain full-time for financial aid purposes, so if they fail, they fail. I can't force them to come to class and do the work. The 102s and 210s don't have a problem with this, so it must be the whole "welcome to college" thing more than anything else, where students who don't come to class or do the work are bound to get a rude awakening one way or the other.

Midterms are coming up. They're right around the corner, actually -- the midterm date is March 12. While that's still two weeks or so away, keep in mind that two of my three classes only meet once a week, so it's faster than they may think. I've created midterm tally sheets for my 102 and 011 students tonight, listing all the points they have available and the number of them they need to get a passing grade on the midterm report...though doing so is just about pointless. Midterm grades at the university mean precisely dick, and they mean even less to classes in the English department, where something like 60-70% of the points for the semester happen after midterms, not before. They're just something the instructors/professors have to deal with, not the students.

Speaking of instructors and professors, I got an email yesterday from the payroll lady (the one who issued me my advance check, yet neglected to tell me that I'd have to get it deposited and not cashed) sending me a memo on the health/life insurance coverage for university employees and how that works. She asked me to look over the form and to tell her what my plans are (read: if I'm still going to be teaching here in the fall or not) so she can make adjustments to the policies.

The problem here is, of course, that I don't know what my plans are as of yet. I won't know until at least this time next month, more than likely, whether Daisy and I will be living in Nebraska or staying here in Kansas after the wedding, let alone know whether or not I'm returning to the university for another semester or two in some capacity. There's reasoning for all of this, of course, and once I have more information one way or the other (which should be available sometime next month), I'll be able to fill all of you in on what's going on. But, for right now? I'm sort of at a loss of what to tell this woman when it comes to insurance stuff. And I'm pretty sure she can't wait a month. My checks are small enough as it is; I can't really afford to have anything else taken out of them on a monthly basis, as the state of Kansas already taxes the everliving shit out of me (I've never seen higher personal state taxes than here in Kansas, where I lose about $100 per check to them every two weeks and barely get anything back come tax season). If I'm forced to get healthcare coverage, I'd much rather go local and get one of the free plans that basically gives me "liability" coverage, since I never -- and I mean never, unless I'm nearly dead -- go to a doctor for anything. Getting it through the university, unless it's provided for free since I'm a state employee, is just another tax on my paycheck for a service I'll never use. And I really, really don't need that. What I need is to be able to feed myself and the cats and keep the lights on, keep gas in the car, etc.

So I'm not sure what I'll do yet. I'll probably review the memo form she sent and talk to the administrator about it on Tuesday (if she's there and if she's not incredibly swamped with work to do, I mean), and figure it out then. This came out of the blue, really; aside from a few sentences of conversation about it last semester with the aforementioned department administrator, nobody ever told me any of this. As I told Daisy, "Nobody at the university tells you shiiiiiiiit unless you specifically ask." This is also probably popping up now as they've finally, apparently, processed my contract information for the semester. So we'll see what happens.

In other news, Daisy is readying the invitations to be sent out next week, and I'll get all of the ones for my friends and associates here (read: the ones which will be hand-delivered or stuck in mailboxes in the department) over Spring Break. I plan to visit Daisy for several days over Spring Break, weather and class workload permitting, so that I can not only get out of the house (and state) for a few days, but to see the parents as well. My monetary situation should be better by then, and I should be able to actually relax a bit and help plan more of the stuff for the wedding while I'm there, if necessary. As you may know, my Spring Break starts around 11AM on Thursday, March 13, and extends all the way through the morning of Tuesday the 25th, when I'll return to teach my 102 class. That's a twelve-day break, with plenty of time for a visit to Omaha for a few days as well as time to do any grading I'll have over that period -- I'll have to calculate and post all of my students' midterm grades, at the very least, over that time. It seems far away, but it's really not. It's barely three weeks. There's a lot coming up in those three weeks, though -- I have four more papers to collect from my collective students, two sets of journals to grade, and a lot of other little things to do in the meantime.

Tomorrow, once I get up, I'll be paying my bills. One of the main reasons I went to Walmart last night was to get stamps, as I only had two left and have at least three bills to mail out, including the rent. I'll probably also get my new electric bill on Monday or Tuesday, roughly, as I saw the meter reader checking my meter on Thursday afternoon after I got home. Bills come, bills go, as do paychecks. I'm just glad I can now cover everything with no real issue, and that my life can return to some semblance of normality again.

First off, though, I'm going back to bed. Again. I showered and did a load of laundry, and I'm no longer cold -- but I am still tired. I'm not planning to wake up until at least mid-afternoon; I have no reason to. Daisy's working her night shifts, and she'll be asleep until at least 7PM or so anyway.

So. Fare thee well, folks.

Goodbye, Weekend

Spring semester: day twenty-four

Yesterday and today were good days. No, seriously. Well, for the most part.

I'll start off by sharing the three big things first, and then I'll later dissect them in my normal chronological fashion:

1. My paycheck was deposited into the bank this morning by my dad. I'm still waiting for it to clear, but it's been "pending" since early this afternoon and will clear in the overnight hours.
2. The 2DS and Pokemon X has arrived.
3. The Office of Academic Affairs did, apparently, receive my notice of appointment (read: my contract), and verified as much yesterday in an email.

I call this post "Goodbye, Weekend," because now I can actually get down to business and do a lot of the things I've been meaning to do, most of which involve money and stress-free time. As such, while I'll have time off, almost all of it will be occupied with one thing or another. When I'm not paying bills, I'll be grading. When I'm not grading, I'll be playing Pokemon X. When I'm not playing Pokemon X, I'll be sleeping.  When I'm not sleeping, I'll be doing one of the other aforementioned things.

The weather and my allergies is slowly making my sinus infection come back, I think. I'm not sure yet. Some days I'll feel perfectly fine, and then others I'll have a lot of sinus pressure/aching in the usual spots. Today it's been the latter, though I would imagine a large part of that is because of the frankly insane weather we've had here in the past 36 hours or so.

When I got up yesterday morning to go to class, it was raining lightly. It was also still warm from the night before -- 55 degrees. It turned over to a steady rain around 6:45 or so, which was somewhat soothing to hear and smell.

By the time I left the house, the temperature had dropped nearly twenty degrees and it was sleeting, but it wasn't normal sleet -- it was those little hard ice balls that's like miniature hail. There's a name for it; Parker told me what it was, but I can't remember it now. Nothing was sticking, of course; it was 70 on Tuesday and nearly 60 on Wednesday (and 62 today). The ground hasn't been frozen in a week. On my drive to West campus, it alternated between that and rain, over and over, with high winds (we were under a wind warning all day). By the time I left campus to come home, it was raining ice. Sideways. By the time I got halfway up the interstate, I was driving through thick, almost whiteout-conditions snow -- none of which was sticking but made the drive miserable regardless.

As I pulled into my driveway -- and I stress this fact, as I'm not making it up -- the snow stopped and the sun came out. Like flipping a light switch. Almost as if it was waiting for me in particular to be done driving in it before it decided to stop. Stuff like this happens more often than you'd think -- between my allergies, sinus infections, and everything else, I'm pretty sure that nature itself has a vendetta against me.

I stayed awake all day -- I wanted to cook some food, and of course I was waiting for the games to arrive and to hear word on my paycheck from my mother. I got the latter shortly after 1PM or so, when she told me it was in my account. It cleared in the overnight last night, so now I can pay all of my bills again just fine.

The 2DS and Pokemon X arrived around 1:30, and I put it on to charge up so that I could actually use it. In the meantime, I cooked and ate lunch -- I made fried chicken and a large bowl of poutine (french fries, cheese curds, and gravy). The weather cleared up and got warmer again, up to the low 50s after the snow rolled through and finished. That's probably why, by mid-afternoon, I had the beginnings of a serious sinus headache -- the weather changing back and forth, back and forth, very quickly. I'm not a fan of that, obviously, as it wrecks my allergies, but I live in Kansas, and that's the norm for this time of year. Next week, apparently, we're having our yearly "tornado drill" on campus, where all of us will be crammed into a lecture hall/tornado shelter for half an hour while they test the sirens and the like. They do it every spring right before "tornado season" starts. Tornado season in the midwest usually runs from mid-March to around early June or so, as those are the months of the year where tornadoes are the most likely to pop up out here.

Anyway.

I booted up the 2DS and ran all of its setup programs and the like once it started -- and I was (and still am) really impressed with everything the little system can do. It has three digital cameras on it, has a bunch of little built-in games and apps, such as a web browser, an mp3 player, and a photo app, it comes with an SD card to save downloaded content on (and to save pictures on), it gets software/firmware updates via wifi, etc. It's a really awesome little machine -- it's basically a smartphone without the phone part. As for the graphics and the Pokemon game itself? So far I'm pretty stunned. I'm only a few hours into the game, but the gameplay is fun, the resolution is great, and overall the 2DS is a fairly comfortable system to hold (though it'll take some getting used to compared to my old DS Lite). I like it quite a bit. I'll have to be patient and soak up the gameplay over the course of the weekend to see what I can do while I have the time.

When it comes to the weird email from earlier this week regarding my contract and the Office of Academic Affairs, there isn't much to tell -- I had replied and told them that it was sent over to their offices on February 11 (last Tuesday, not this past one) when I was on campus, and that's the truth. As soon as I got my contract, I accepted/signed/dated it and sent it over there. Yesterday I received an email response from the woman who'd sent me the first email (telling me they hadn't received it) informing me that they indeed had received it -- so I'm guessing it was stuck in the mailbox, they forgot to file it, or it had otherwise been misplaced in the interim. No worries, however; apparently they have it now and it's done, so it doesn't concern me anymore.

Daisy arrived home from Kansas City yesterday afternoon. I Skyped with her for a while last night, despite the fact that my sinus headache was absolutely pounding by that time, until the sinus/pain pills I took kicked in and I was able to go to bed around midnight. I woke up around 10AM.

Today has been much the same as yesterday, really -- I made food and played the 2DS for a while before it needed to be recharged again (which it's currently doing now). I ran and unloaded the dishwasher. I filtered three big jugs of water for my coffeemaker. I checked my school email as well as my personal email, and showered. I got dressed, as I have to go to Walmart tonight, in a little while, to pick up a few essentials. I'm enjoying the somewhat warmer weather for the moment before it gets colder again (and more back to normal, so to speak) next week; while we're not supposed to get any more snow or anything like that, the high temperatures are only going to be in the 30s again instead of the 50s and high 60s that I've seen for the better part of the past week here. After the sun went down this evening, the temperature dropped by fifteen degrees almost as quickly, so I'd like to go out and do my shopping before it gets too cold for me to not wear a jacket.

Tomorrow, and for most of the rest of the weekend, actually, I'll be grading. I have three sets of assignments to go through -- the first paper for my 011 students, the third paper for my 210 students, and the quiz I gave to my 102s. They're all fairly short assignments; the longer ones won't kick in for another few weeks at the earliest, but still, it'll take some time. This is why I wish there were football in the spring, so I could have something on the TV in the background while I grade. I don't even know if the Olympics are still on; I haven't watched a single minute of actual television since the Super Bowl ended, and haven't cared in the least about the winter games. I really don't watch TV; the televisions in my house serve primarily as display devices for movies and video games, and I haven't even turned on my PlayStation or Xbox in about six months. That's probably shocking to those of you who play games for hours every day, but I'll remind you, I'm not a gamer. I only play the Pokemon games, and only then until I beat them and/or become bored with them...by which point the next one has usually been released.

In addition to that, I'll be paying my bills this weekend; I still have my Discover bill and my Citi card bill to pay, both of which are due by the end of the first week of March or so. I need to write out my rent check as well, so with those three things, most of the paycheck I had deposited will shrink and vanish. I can't pay off both cards fully, of course, as that would take more money than that entire check provided me, but I can take a few good chunks out of them and pay them down a little more quickly than I could before. I probably won't be able to completely pay off the Discover card until the wedding or a few months after the wedding, depending on how much I need to use it between now and then, and on what. That's another reason I'm going shopping for some essentials tonight -- I need stamps.

I'll get paid again a week from today, but it will be the "adjusted" check based on the advance check I just got, so it will be half of one of my normal paychecks. I'm fine with that; I get it. My checks will be normal from Spring Break forward, basically, and until then I'll still be budgeting for bills a little tighter than usual. At this point I've become so used to penny-pinching for everything that I almost no longer bat an eye; I have truly become one of those "living paycheck-to-paycheck" people. To help combat that a bit, next weekend I have already set aside time to do all of my taxes, and to take care of all the work that entails. I'd do it this weekend, but again, paper-grading and Pokemon X. I want to have some free time to focus on all of it fully, and it looks like the soonest I'll have the time to do that will be next weekend.

Mind you, I don't have to grade all of my students' papers this weekend if I don't want to. Keep in mind that I have an eight-hour stretch between classes on Tuesday where I'm basically alone in my office on main campus with peace and quiet if I want to be. Even though I do spend most of my day on Tuesday hanging out with my friends and colleagues I never see, I still have plenty of time to work on my students' work. We'll see how it goes. I may grade the 210 assignments there at the very least, as they should take the least amount of time to go through. I do need to grade my 102 students' quizzes this weekend so that they can get them back on Tuesday morning, as I have student workshop copies coming in that day and I'll need to be able to devote time to them between Tuesday and Thursday as well.

I started my grocery shopping a little early, I suppose -- this evening I purchased incense and the cats' special Purina ONE urinary tract health food on Amazon (both are cheaper there) and picked up a copy of Tetris Axis for the 3DS, since it was marked down to $7.50 new and had really good reviews -- not that I'll have time to play it for at least several more weeks. In those coming weeks, I actually have a lot of stuff I need to get from Amazon, once I've built up a few paychecks in the bank and have my bills covered fully. Many things I get there are much cheaper than I can get them at the grocery store or at Walmart.

In other news, Daisy, as mentioned before, ordered the ring I showed you here in my last post for her wedding band. It arrived quickly, and...she doesn't like it. At all. Well, okay, it's not that she doesn't like it, it's that it's too thick/wide to wear with the bigger/wider engagement ring, and she has short fingers. Wearing them both at once means the rings go up to her knuckle. So, apparently, she's back to square one.

"Just get a thin, plain band, babe," I said. "Like, a 2mm or 3mm band."

My own wedding band is 6mm; it's wide because it's a mens' ring. I looked to see if there were thinner versions of my own ring so that our bands would match, but there aren't. 6mm seems to be the thinnest width ring I could find for mens' rings; many others were 8mm or larger.

I was, however, able to find many thinner, plain-band women's wedding bands at 2mm or 3mm, and showed some to her. She's still trying to figure out what she wants to do, and finds herself becoming continually more frustrated with the ring situation. While her new engagement ring is growing on her more and more, finding a ring that will go with it for her wedding band is really troubling to her.

By the way, this was the "hideous" wedding band she'd picked out originally, the one I didn't like:

 

Mind you,  I still don't really like it, but...ahem...it's growing on me. More than anything else I'm afraid she's going to have the same "wear thin and break" problem with this ring that she had with the original engagement ring I bought her. It's very thin, the metal is even thinner in some places (most notably around the curvy designs) and...well, it just rubbed me the wrong way. It is, indeed, a very Daisy-esque style of ring, which is to say that it fits her personality and style well. But, if you scroll back a post or two to compare it with her engagement ring, it doesn't really go well with it. It is, indeed, one of those rings that doesn't really go well with anything.

"I don't have anything against it or your choice, babe," I told her this afternoon. "It's your ring, your choice, your finger that has to wear it every day. It's up to you if you get it, but..."

She gave me her classic "Daisy look," which is halfway between a glare and a grimace.

"...but," I continued, "it looks like a toe ring a hippy would wear. Or a bracelet. I think if it were bracelet-sized and you were wearing it on your wrist like a bangle, it would be really pretty."

Mind you, this is me being completely honest. I don't hold anything back from Daisy, nor do I zip my lips (even though at times, I probably should). I am always completely up-front with her when it comes to all of my thoughts and feelings, even to a fault -- and she, generally, is the same way with me. Our truly open back-and-forth communication makes our relationship strong, and for the most part I never feel a genuine need to bite my tongue. It's just part of who I am -- I have always been completely transparent in all of my thoughts and feelings with Daisy. I figure if I'm going to be marrying the kindest and sweetest -- as well as the most honest, non-violent and non-threatening person I've ever met on this planet, I should at least be the same with her. I'm not going to smile and nod and grit my teeth. That's not the person I am anyway.

I fully support her in her decisions either way -- if she wants that ring, I will be happy for her that she's found something she wants and loves. If she chooses another ring? I'll still feel the same way. I just want her to be happy. Life's too short to stress about a little piece of metal, even if that piece of metal is a wedding band. 

In the meantime she's still figuring out what she wants. While she may not share my opinions on different rings -- believe me, there are some I loved that she absolutely hates and vice versa -- she'll make her decision sooner or later on what she's going to get, and I'm not going to badger her about it.

Two hours later...

I have gone to and returned from Walmart, where (of course) since it's Friday night -- payday for a lot of people -- it was busy and annoying to navigate through. I only needed a few things, such as coffee and cigarettes, a roll of paper towels, some bleach (one of the pairs of Dad's pants had a few darkish spots and some slight staining that could be removed with a good bleach rinse) and some cooking oil. While I was there, since I couldn't get any the last time I was at the Dollar Tree with Daisy, I picked up the items to make homemade laundry detergent.

I've probably written about this here before, but it's remarkably easy and cheap to make your own laundry detergent -- for one batch, it's one cup Borax, one cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda, and 3/4 or so of a bar of soap grated finely with a cheese grater. That's it. Mix 'em together evenly. 1/4 cup of it (or so, give or take) will do an average laundry load. I make massive batches of this stuff, and split it into airtight containers, such as empty cat litter jugs. Tonight I made enough to fill a 1.5 gallon Gatorade jug and the container that previously held the pretzel nuggets I got for me and Daisy over Valentine's Day. It lasts forever -- just don't get it wet. 

There's a way to make the liquid stuff too, though it's much more time consuming and involves using a double-boiler system to melt the soap and the like. It's not worth the time or effort involved when I can spend half an hour and make a massive batch of the powder version that'll last me months.

Oh, and use a hard soap and not one that has any oils in it, either -- I usually buy a bar of Fels-Naptha laundry bar soap (I did tonight) and then supplement that with a bar of another hard soap, like Dial or Irish Spring. Ivory is too light and airy to shred properly in the grater, and it'll all stick together in clumps.

Ahem. Anyway.

I came home and put away the groceries and made that laundry detergent mixture. Daisy was out with friends tonight going dancing -- she didn't have to be at work until 10:30 or 11, since on Friday nights now she goes in late and then stays late in the morning to help train new hires there, as she's one of their best, smartest employees and knows how to do that.

So, soon I shall go to bed and the first day of my weekend will already be over. I'm tired again anyway. But tomorrow, tomorrow I shall pick up where I left off and begin doing actual work again.

Crash and Burn

Spring semester: day twenty-two

I am seriously burnt-out.


I wrote my last post last night and in the morning before I went to teach, where I spent over twelve hours on two different campuses, teaching two good lectures and drinking almost an entire pot of espresso (yes, espresso) because I was so tired that I just needed to be able to make it through the day. I really don't know how I did it without falling asleep.

It is now after 1AM. It doesn't matter, of course, as it's not like I have to get up tomorrow before the afternoon if I don't want to (and I probably won't), but still.

There's no news yet from back home about my paycheck; it's getting down to the wire, of course, and I hope it arrives soon -- I have two bills which are due a week from today, and they have to be mailed with enough time to, y'know, get to their recipients. On the plus side, the weather back home is supposed to get warmer (like it has been here) so the snow my parents have been continually pelted with for the past month or so should be melting off, making travel easier.

I didn't get to talk to Daisy any once I got home from teaching; she went to bed literally ten minutes before I walked in the door. My night 011 class ran a bit longer than I expected it to, since I had to collect papers and explain their next ones, which are due shortly before Spring Break -- as well as cover a lesson on run-on sentences/comma splices. Only about 2/3 of my 011 students were actually there anyway -- a large chunk of them just didn't show up to class this week (probably because the paper was due). I didn't get home until well after 9.

Daisy did tell me, though -- almost as if she knew I was writing about it in my last post here even before I posted it -- that she'd found a wedding band that she liked (one that, I will say, is not the hideous one I hated) and that she purchased it yesterday. Here it is:

I like it, actually. Simple, elegant, and pretty. For the record, below is a photo of my own wedding band:

So they sort of match, in a simplistic way. I think her choice goes well with the new engagement ring, actually. No, it's not exactly a "matched set" or anything like that, but it goes well enough with it.

Really, I'm just glad she didn't get the first (hideous) ring she'd originally wanted.

Still, she's not posted any photos of her new engagement ring yet. She said it's because she's been busy (mainly because she went back to work immediately upon getting home, worked until yesterday morning, and then basically went to sleep to recuperate). She plans on posting some photos today. She also, with Mama, went to pick up a ton of wedding decorations for the venue, including tablepieces and a "mailbox" for people who give us cards at the wedding, and told me all of her plans for snacks and candies for everyone there. She clearly has this wedding planning thing under control, knows what she wants, and is executing said plans.

Most other plans and decorating stuff is being put on hold for a few days, though, as she and her best friend (aside from me, of course) are going to Kansas City for an overnight excursion/shopping trip, and are leaving this afternoon. They'll return tomorrow afternoon sometime, probably a few hours after I get home from teaching tomorrow morning. I told her to be super-careful, as she's not only mostly unfamiliar with the KC area, but there's some weird weather supposed to be hitting over the course of the next 18 hours or so -- the Weather Channel here says we could get rain and thunderstorms tonight into tomorrow, and I-70 and north of there (which, ironically, runs through KC) could get 2 inches of snow.

I'll remind you that the high temperature here yesterday was nearly 70. Welcome to the midwest, folks.

So. Daisy will be gone to KC and I probably won't hear from her other than the occasional message back and forth until she returns home to Omaha, judging by the timeframe of her trip and when I have to teach my classes tonight and tomorrow morning. Most of the day today I'll just be relaxing; after starting this post at 1AM, I went to bed and slept until 11 or so, so I'm well-rested enough to be able to be awake all day, drive to West campus this evening to teach, and then come home to sleep fast and teach again in the morning.

I got an email this morning from the office of financial affairs that said my signed notice of appointment had not been received by them -- that's my contract as an "Academic Lecturer" that I told you about last week, which took them forever to send over to the department in the first place. I signed it and sent it to them the day I received it, February 11. As that's been over a week ago now and apparently they never got it, who knows where it went. I replied and told them that I'd sent it then, and if it hadn't arrived that I'd gladly fill out another copy or come personally sign the documents in their offices when I returned to campus next week. I don't know what the issue is there -- chalk it up to more "what can go wrong, will go wrong" Brandon luck, since these sorts of administrative fuck-ups/problems seem to follow me around and have plagued me the entire semester thus far, and -- as always -- they're always out of my hands to where I can't do anything about them. I'm not too concerned about it, as after all, I worked all of last semester just fine without a contract or official appointment, and my payroll has already been fixed and set by the payroll department from now through the rest of the semester anyhow, but it's just another pain in the ass that I shouldn't have to deal with or worry about.

Today I paid the two small(ish) bills that I could afford to pay before my parents receive and deposit my paycheck for me, leaving me with about $40 to my name in my bank account. I absolutely, desperately need that check to just get there and be deposited ASAFP, because I now officially cannot pay any of my other bills, or my rent, until it's in my account. Color me a bit nervous, obviously. I have two other bills (both of them credit card bills) due during the first week or so of March, and should also be receiving my new electric bill sometime within this next week as well. The rent's the big thing, however -- most of that check will go directly to my rent, especially since this is the shortest month of the year and that date is coming up fast. Not to mention, of course, that my first real paycheck of the semester doesn't come in until the 28th, which is the last day of the month (and it won't be big enough to cover even 2/3 of my rent, since it's the whole "make up from the advance check" thing).

Since I started writing this post this afternoon, I received an email from my mother, who said that the weather back home was still really nasty (ice storm there last night) and they got in to work late this morning, so they didn't have the chance to check the mail today (they have a PO box in town, not a mailbox at the house). She said they'd check it tomorrow and keep me updated on everything. I would imagine that even with the one-day delay from President's Day, it should be there tomorrow, if not there already. I mailed it last Friday, so that's almost a full week.

This afternoon I do have some chores to do around the house, but mainly stuff I've just been putting off as of late due to exhaustion. I need to load and run the dishwasher again, and I need to put away my laundry and clean the cat room/box. I also have to shower before going to class again tonight, as I look like somewhat of a hobo. Because the weather's been changing so much as of late, my allergies have also been going crazy, which makes me even more fatigued. In addition to that, with the rain/storms moving in this afternoon and evening, last night and today I've had a continuous, low-level weather headache, which I do occasionally get when that sort of weather rolls in quickly. Part of that is probably stress as well, though who knows.

My class tonight should be somewhat interesting; I'm giving my 210 students their graded papers back, and will be collecting their new ones before going over their next assignment -- a public service announcement. Yes, seriously, that's one of their assignments. They write me a script for a PSA. I show them a video as well, and direct them to a chapter in the book that we'll touch on a little tonight and a little more next week, and that's about it. Tomorrow morning for my 102 students I don't have a hell of a lot on the docket except for showing them an example research paper out of their grammar/MLA book, and discussing how workshops will work (as group 1 brings in their copies on Tuesday).

Oh, and I'm collecting a quiz from them.

Last Thursday, I'd planned to cover an article out of their textbook, and had told them to read it in advance. Only one of them did. Out of twelve. So, I said, fuck it, we'd cover it on Tuesday. I did cover it yesterday, in detail, and told them they'd have a quiz on it -- so that it was best that they'd read it beforehand. Most of them still hadn't appeared to have read it even though I'd told them they'd be quizzed on it, so (in a particularly evil move on my part) I took one of the discussion questions from the end of the article and told them to go home and type up a full page, answering said question for a 20-point quiz grade, and to turn it in tomorrow.

I bet they'll do their readings next time, won't they?

If they don't do it or turn it in tomorrow morning, they don't get to "make it up" and turn it in later. There are no make-up quizzes. And for the two or three of them who were absent yesterday...oh well. Maybe they should've come to class, seeing as I told them on Blackboard and via email that there would be a quiz. That's on them.

I'm not a dick, nor am I an uncaring professor, but I do expect my students to do the work I assign to them and to do the readings I assign to them. I expect them to put as much effort into the class as I put into teaching it. Sorry, but that's how college works. Most professors aren't anywhere near as forgiving or lenient as I tend to be, either, so some of them are in for a huge rude awakening once they start taking upper-level courses in their degree fields. As I've said before, I can only give them the tools for academic success; it's up to them how they use those tools.

Mind you, most of the students in that class are good students anyhow. Well, from what I can tell, anyway.

This weekend, I'll be grading those quizzes, the 210 papers I collect tonight, and the 011 papers I collected last night. I'll also be playing my new Pokemon game whenever it and the 2DS arrive sometime tomorrow, thanks to Daisy. It's a nice busy weekend I have ahead of me, it seems. On the plus side, I don't have to do any shopping (not that I want to rack up more charges on my credit card anyway) because of Daisy's cooking and the groceries/supplies we got last weekend. It'll be a nice weekend spent indoors doing work and chores, and I can totally get behind that. At the very least, I'll be a bit more relieved about everything once my paycheck gets into the bank, which -- even if it takes until Friday or Saturday to get that done -- I'll still be able to pay my bills again, which will put me considerably more at ease than I am now.

On that note, I'm off to do the aforementioned household chores and get a shower.