Headaches, Part III

A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 AM CST MONDAY.
* TIMING... A BAND OF SNOW WILL DEVELOP OVER THE REGION AND SPREAD EASTWARD ACROSS KANSAS OVERNIGHT.
* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS... OF 1 TO 2 INCHES IS EXPECTED ACROSS MUCH OF THE ADVISORY AREA... HOWEVER A FEW LOCATIONS COULD SEE AMOUNTS UP TO 3 INCHES.

Because, of course, we need this on top of all of the snow that none of the road crews, apparently, can plow off the highways as-is.

No, it's not a lot. But it's an annoyance and a shitty start to a week that's going to be long enough for me as it is.

It's not doing anything now; it hasn't done anything all day. Yesterday, as I mentioned, it was spitting a few flurries when I went out to Walmart.  There's already too much snow for me to even attempt to get my garbage bins down to the road for a pickup tomorrow. None of this stuff is melting, at all. It's not been above freezing for a full week. I'll be surprised if the garbage trucks can even make their runs tomorrow anyway, since the residential streets are still a nightmare and aren't getting any better. And, obviously, if we get another 2-3 inches of snow, that's not going to make my trip down to campus and back on Tuesday any easier either, especially as I'll be returning home around 9PM or later...on the night of a home basketball game, at that.

Look, I have a decent schedule and a fair amount of free time this semester -- I'm not disputing that -- but apparently the celestial sacrifice I've had to make for that is week after week of terrible weather and paycheck issues. I'd say that at least I have my health and that my car is running fine, but knowing my luck I'd get sick and the Monte Carlo would blow its head gasket if I spoke those words aloud. I'm just sick of being under constant stress more than anything else. It's not even productive stress -- it's stress over shit that I can't control, and sadly, that's the stress that I'm most susceptible to. I find myself so constantly angry all the time about almost everything, because so little seems to go right or go in my favor. Yes, Daisy helped me pay my bills this month. That was very sweet/generous of her, and was the one good thing that's happened since...oh, the beginning of the semester, or so? Something like that. As I mentioned before, when one thing goes wrong, almost everything seems to go wrong in a sort of domino effect. First the payroll issues, then the snowstorm, then the continued payroll issues, then the administrator's resignation, and now more snow coming -- just to bring up some of the bigger things of the past three weeks or so.

I paid my electric and water bills tonight, and let me tell you, it was fucking depressing. I now have a little more than $100 to my name, period, before I pick up my paper paycheck (that I still have to figure out what I'm going to do with) on Tuesday. More than half of that check, once it gets into my bank account somehow, has to go to my rent in about two weeks, since I'm not getting paid on the 14th now. The rest of it will have to go towards covering the rest of my bills for the month as they come in -- one of my credit card bills has already arrived, and another is on its way. Once that check is in my bank account, one of my bigger problems will be solved for the moment, but that only opens the door for other ones to take its place.

I will get a few days of relative peace when Daisy arrives on Wednesday night. As I've mentioned before, when she's here, most of my problems and issues tend to melt away or go on hold, at least for a little while. And, of course, it's important that we spend Valentine's Day together. I just hope that my stresses, problems, and general sour attitude towards the world right now don't sully our time together. As you may recall, that sort of happened in the beginning of October when she was here, as she arrived two days after my sister died in a car crash, and almost immediately upon her arrival, I injured my eye with a pineapple (if you don't know the story already, please, don't ask -- it's embarrassing). I was under so much stress at the time and was so upset about anything and everything going on in my life that we ended up squabbling back and forth a lot while she was visiting. I don't want that to happen again -- it's not her fault my life sucks.

Despite all of this stuff going on, I'm not depressed -- I've been sleeping well, I've been eating well, and I've been going about my life. I'm not sure what I'm dealing with, however, can be defined as acceptance that my life is crap or not, but that's probably what it is more than anything else. I keep thinking that things will change, that my life won't suck as much in a month, six months, or a year, and so far that's never been proven true. Of course, six months from now I'll be married to Daisy, and a lot will be changing, so maybe this time around that will actually happen.

As I've been writing this post, it's begun snowing again. Hard. Hard enough to where the Weather Channel updated its forecast:

A steady snow will continue to fall through early morning. Cloudy with temperatures steady in the low teens. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Snowfall of 2 to 3 inches through 5:30am.

I'm very glad that I don't have to leave the house tomorrow. Another "2 to 3 inches" will put about 13-14 inches total on the ground here in Newton, and will completely re-snarl the roads even in the spots where they were okay, or even good, before. Christ, I am so done with winter. I'm totally at the point where I'm like "Okay, if it's going to keep snowing, at least snow a shitload so either I or the university can cancel classes."

Not that doing so helps my lesson planning any, of course.

I reworked and wrote out my lesson plans for the rest of the semester for my English 102 class on West campus. If all goes well, that class will end completely on May 1st, and that'll be the day they take their final -- a full week before the semester is supposed to end. This is because it's a small class, I can cover things in it relatively quickly and still give them enough time necessary to finish up all of their work, and because I've made workshops one day each instead of two days (again, due to how few of them I have). With the ability to set my final exam day/time whenever I want for classes on the West campus, this basically means I'll totally get an awesome break at the end of the semester when I need that time the most to finish up things and grade papers -- and with my 210 class scheduled to end on April 23, I won't have to go back to West campus again after May 1. The end of the semester is May 8. Finals week is the 10th through the 16th. I will only have one formal final exam to proctor over Finals Week, and that will be my 011 night class's exam -- which will be held on a different day/time than the normal exams (so I won't be on campus until that exam night).

I've structured my classes well in advance because of the hectic times of the end of the semester, and the fact that I'll be planning for the wedding and may be planning/packing to move out of this place shortly thereafter. Because of all of that extra stuff going on in the background, I need to maximize my time and keep everything as efficient as I possibly can starting, oh, directly after Spring Break.

April 23: 210 class ends with its Oral Presentations. No Final.
May 1: 102 class ends with its final exam.
May 6: 011 class ends until its final exam.
Sometime between May 12-16? Final exam given for 011. Grades posted ASAP after.

Look at the dates in-between -- I have a ton of time to get everything graded and finished and still prepare for the wedding and possible move. I'm collecting papers in the in-between times, of course, but with a schedule spaced out like that, I have more than enough time to grade them all, and won't have to worry about a stack of twenty massive projects and/or all sorts of other shit to do as the semester wraps.

In other news, I've been writing this post for a little more than an hour now, and there's already an inch of new snow on the ground. No, I'm not kidding. It just started out of the blue and it's snowing like hell. So, apparently, the forecast above was right. It looks like tomorrow will be another one of those "hole up in my cave" sort of days, not that I planned to do anything else anyway. I think it would be somewhat hilarious if the university closed down again, though (of course) I doubt that will happen. Still, they have about three more hours to make a decision there...hah.