Jots and Tittles

Gah.  Today's the first day of school for most people, so here I am, all alone, since I don't start until tomorrow.  Actually, I'm kind of very ok with having Tuesdays completely off (the irony of the situation being, now that I have Tuesdays off, Troy doesn't.  Heh.) - it gives me time to do stuff that needs to be done.  Like going to the post office and whatnot.  And if I'm lucky I might still get to have lunch with my boy.

But today's also cramps day, meaning all that stuff I thought I wanted to do either won't get done because I'm curling up in misery with a heating pad, or will get done but I'll be miserable the whole time.  Without the heating pad.  I do intend to run to King Soopers later and get some ibuprofen because we're out, and that's not acceptable.  I needs my painkillers.  So King Soopers will be first, and the post office will have to wait.  Speaking of King Soopers, I think I finally might have figured out some way of keeping my receipts where I'll actually remember to put them.  I think.  So we'll see how that works out, only it's not exactly the most... organized of systems.  Still, it'll be more than I've done before, so that's something.  Woot.  And, hey, at least I know the cramps mean that my body is doing something it never did before, so that's something.  I'd rather have cramps and be regular than not have cramps and bleed to death.

At least I'm not in Ashley's position.  She had to go to the hospital this morning, which is scary... I can't say all of why as I don't know if she'd want that broadcast, but she's in a lot of pain and she doesn't really know what's going on.  Luckily her dad came down and took her, so she has him with her.  I totally would have taken her and bugger the cramps, but I definitely know how much more reassuring it is to have your parents with you when wandering into the hospital, rather than just your roommate. :)  But all of y'alls who read this monstrosity of a journal, keep her in your prayers.  I'll try to keep updates going, and if I start to slack just shoot me a reminder comment.

Yarrgh.  It's amazing how my thoughts can just change over the course of a day or two.  Sunday, I was all kinds of excited about God and how amazingly awesome He is, and His creation, and the beauty of it all, and... yeah.  Elegant is also a good word for that, by the way.  And then today, just because my body has gone all postal on me, I'm like "blah blah, I hate the world" like it suddenly isn't God's anymore, or isn't beautiful or something.  Gah.  Stupid me. 

But I have been spending a lot of time reading apologetics stuff.  I'm continually amazed at all the conflicting beliefs I held, and how often the secular one is just ludicrous.  Like evolution, for example.  I'm sorry, but the burden of proof is on the evolutionists, and I just don't see it.  After something like 180 years since Darwin proposed the theory and people started really digging in to the fossil record, we haven't found a single missing link.  Everything that seemed to be a missing link was later proven to be just a stunted or deformed version of some species we already knew - like Lucy, who turned out to be a pygmy chimpanzee.  Or that guy they thought was a Neanderthal and turned out to be a really old man with arthritis.  Or that bird/lizard thing which turned out to be not at all bird and all lizard.  There's literally NO evidence for evolution as it is traditionally understood!  And then there's that "Punctuated Equilibrium" crap, where they try to say that "oh, well, of course there's gaps in the fossil record, because there were these periods where things just evolved reallyreallyfast all of a sudden and then stopped."  Which anybody with a brain can tell is completely pulled out from where the sun don't shine.  Honestly, what explanation could you possibly provide for a ludicrous  assertion like that?  If you're going to claim that there was some period of intense radiation from... something... that caused this rapidfire evolution, you better be able to find evidence of that.  We know that radiation lasts for freaking ever  - and even when it's gone, there are chemical changes in the very soil that will show pretty clearly what happened.  So, until you find evidence for that, your theory is still a pile of crap.  But it's amazing how many people willfully blind themselves to that fact, because the alternative is just so hard to face.  God is a scary idea, if you're against His existence.  And of course nobody wants to be wrong.

There was one argument I encountered, though, that I'd never seen before, but I found very impressive.  It comes from SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.  The basic plan is to scan the universe, or as much of it as we can reach from Earth, looking for radio signals that exert a pattern of some recognizable sort - like a sort of alien morse code.  Just a recognizable pattern, instead of the randomness of background noise in space, would be enough for SETI to claim that its mission was successful, and that they had found intelligent life outside of planet Earth.  Think about that.  All they need to claim an intelligence behind the signal is to find a pattern in it.  And if they found it, I think they'd have a hard time finding someone who didn't agree that some sort of intelligence was behind that signal.  Now, that being the case (signal pattern = intelligence behind it), what do we do with DNA?  Let's see.  We have a series of four bases, A, T, G, C.  From these bases, patterns are built up that hold instructions to run an entire living being.  HMMMMMMMM.  Do you think that PATTERN might signal INTELLIGENCE behind it?  What a thought - and it had never even occurred to me before.  So that was spiffy.

Well, friends, I can't take this anymore - I've gots to get me some painkillers before I try to kill something else.  It's a good thing Aspen isn't up here, because I might grab me some dark chocolate as well.  And if she ate it, if the chocolate didn't kill her, I would.  ;)

-Jaya-

AS much as I love reading and books and talking about books and what have you, this whole English major thing is getting old.  Is it even possible for me to be any more sick of literary analysis?  Do English majors EVER do ANYTHING other than analyze literature?  Honestly!  I've even got a creative writing concentration - I should be focusing on the craft, not feminist readings of "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"!  I have no problems with reading Tenant, but let's look at how the author crafts a story, not what she may or may not have been trying to suggest about repression of the female voice in Victorian England.  I. DON'T. CARE.  If I cared any less, I would have anticare, and if it ever collided with care... it'd be like matter and antimatter.  The friggen world would end.

Seriously.  I've been reading critical essays until I thought my brains would leak out my ears, because all of a sudden once you get up into higher level English classes you no longer are expected to think for yourself, but to do lots of research on what everybody else thinks and then write a paper about it, cleverly disguising the mix of opinions you got from all of them as one cohesive opinion of your own, so you can throw in the occasional quote here and there.  And of course you better look at it through some theoretical framework or other, because it would make no sense at all to think about what the novel might actually be saying before you try to impose some old dead guy's ideas onto the text and try to derive some meaning out of that.

Original thought is so highly discouraged.  We did a peer review the other day and this one girl was writing an argument against Greenblatt.  For those of you who don't know this, Greenblatt is, like, the god of the literary world.  You just don't argue with Greenblatt, because he's the authority, and it's as simple as that.  The rest of us in the group were saying, "more power to you!  Knock him down, prove him wrong for once, the arrogant old bastard."  And she was scared out of her wits to actually do it.  Doesn't that seem wrong, that she has to be so worried about what Greenblatt has to say about Donne's poetry that she can't give her own argument without feeling awful?

And I just can't get over the epic lameness of CSU's creative writing program.  There are exactly -three- courses required by the English department for creative writing concentrations that have ANYTHING to do with creative writing.  These courses are: Beginning Creative Writing, Intermediate Creative Writing, and - you guessed it - Advanced Creative Writing.  That's it.  Now, laying aside for the moment my qualms with the creative writing courses and their little biases and crap, what the hell?  How does that qualify as a concentration in ANYTHING?  Why not have a class like "Intro to Genre Writing" or "Characterization Techniques" or "Narrative Styles and How to Use Them" or stuff that might actually be USEFUL?  And then we can get rid of "Modern Women Writers" unless you want to take it as an elective.  And how about a capstone that isn't "let's study one author until you're so sick of them and you're glad they're already dead" but something more like "Short Story Capstone" where you have one story that you write and polish and edit and perfect all semester, with other little writing exercises and stuff?  Yes, you should have to take some literature class, you need to be able to understand what people are going to do to your writing and besides, you should be exposed to a wide range of fiction.  But three all-inclusive "Creative Writing" courses is just bullshit.  There is no way you can cram as much information as we need into those three classes.  It simply can't be done.

I can't wait for next semester when I have to do a "senior survey" of the English department.  It's going to be scathing, because I am SO sick of this crap.  This isn't an education if I'm constantly doing the exact same thing over and over and over again and never learning anything new except what those ten critics I read said about gender equality in Wuthering Heights.  That does me no good whatsoever.  I might as well be a Bio major and learn the ins and outs of a mouse's femur for four years.  Sure, it's interesting and potentially useful information, but there's really only so much I can take, and there are so many other, better things I could be doing with my time.

Sigh.  All right, now I'll see if I can drag myself back to the databases and try to find some more articles, preferably ones that I can read past the first three pages without throwing my hands in the air in frustration or disgust.  Or both. 

-Jaya-

Nor have I fallen off the face of the earth, though it's been for freaking ever since I've posted anything on here.  There have been a couple of times where I tried, but CSU's secure login is a little too secure, and it wouldn't let me post.  I could write, but not post.  Lame.

So I got into an accident on Tuesday.  Just a fender-bender and everybody is fine, don't worry.  My turn signal is dead, and the other girl's bumper is a bit dented and loose, but really the damage was minimal.  But holy crap, did it ever turn into a big deal!  She called the cops, and so it took forever for them to come, and of course they took their sweet time doing ANYTHING.  But the end result was that I got called to court.  For a thrice-damned fender-bender.  And my court date isn't until the end of November.  Now, instead of just paying a fine and moving on with my life, I have to have this hanging over my head for a friggen month, just because apparently it's a court-worthy event that I dented her damn bumper.  BUREAUCRACY IS THE DEVIL!  I'm not even sad or scared or anything, I'm just pissed off and frustrated.  Why the hell is this worth all the money and time it takes to take me to court over a dented bumper?  Just give me a fine and let me get on with my life, sheesh!

So anyway, that sucks a lot.  And I really need to get my act together and talk to the honors office about registering for my thesis, cause I slacked off on my pre-thesis and now I can't register for the real thing.  Whoops.  Maybe if they didn't make me take such damn arbitrary pointless classes I wouldn't have this problem, eh?

Meh.  I suppose I didn't have anything to say other than complaints.  So, sorry.  I'm actually not in that bad of a mood.  Just in case you were wondering.

I'm writing this mostly because, if I indulge in a good cry like I'm inclined to do, I'll wind up in more pain than I'm in now, unimaginable as that may seem.  So I'm going to be absolutely, completely miserable and selfish, and you're free to ignore me.  You've been warned.

I went to the doctor today (finally) to figure out what's up with this sore throat from hell.  Swallowing is agonising, speaking is almost as bad, and my ear is starting to hurt too since I don't swallow as often as I should and equalize the pressure.  The verdict is about as vague as it can be - tonsillitis, possibly strep but I won't know that until Monday when the results come in.  They put me on antibiotics and I'm to hope I'll improve within 24 hours, though it may take as much as 72.

But I am SO DAMN FRUSTRATED.  I can't even yell at Aspen, who is barking her damn terrier head off, because it hurts to speak, let alone raise my voice.  I have never longed to eat a piece of bread so much as I do right now, but I know that if I were to try I would be in so much pain that it wouldn't be worth it.  But I'm so sick of soup, milk and watered-down oatmeal!  I can't talk on the phone without hurting myself, but people keep calling to whom I really want to talk, so I try to do it for a little while and by the end I'm reduced to speaking in grunts because they don't hurt as much.

And for all that, now I'm crying anyway, which means that it hurts to blow my nose and my throat is tightening up and I'm drooling on myself because it hurts so much to swallow.  I am so tired of hurting!  Why, why can I not get a moment's reprieve from this constant pain?  Why can't I just be normal?  When I went back to the bathroom earlier, I noticed my tongue is white from all the phlegm.  It's absolutely disgusting.  And I don't know how to get it off, and I don't care enough to try very hard because the only solutions I can come up with involve more pain.

Troy was over for a little while earlier but he's planned a boy night of blowing stuff up on his computer and drinking alcohol with his roommate and Nathaniel, so he didn't stay for long and I'm not likely to see him again tonight.  I'm quite distressed by how much that bothers me - am I really so dependent on his presence to keep myself from such a state?  Or would I have ended up feeling the same as I do now, only with him here to listen to me complain instead of typing it?  God, I wish he was here.  Oh, God, I'm so pathetic!  What would I have done before I had him to rely on?  Curled up with Jerry Bear and wishing he was my boyfriend, most likely.  Is it just me, or does this seem to get worse at night?  Because there were moments during the day where as long as I didn't swallow I felt almost normal, but now the chances of that are nonexistent.  Same happened yesterday.  I'm not sure how wise it would be to go to work tomorrow, but if I don't, it won't make much sense to go in on Monday either, and then I'll have to send in a doctor's note along with my badge and discount card and oh, it's all such a bother.  For heaven's sake, can't I just STOP HURTING?  Is that really so much to ask?  I've loaded myself up on ibuprofen, I've tried that damn throat-numbing spray even though I know it's not going to do any good, I'm sitting here chugging milk in the vain hope that it will soothe something on its way down, and still it hurts.  And I just want it to go away.  I just want to curl up in a little ball and make it stop hurting.  Whatever it takes.  I'm probably going to have to go to King Soopers and get some NyQuil just so I can sleep tonight.  But it never knocks me out the way it seems to do for everyone else.  And I can't stand another night of dreaming that I'm swallowing galaxies.

Just end it now.  Whatever it takes to make the pain go away, do it.  Make it stop.  I'm so, so sick of hurting.  Just make it go away!

Lame. It's been a long day, and I haven't even done anything! I mean... okay, I was in Brighton this morning, so I had to pack everything up and get out of there, which wasn't bad. It's always hard to leave when I have to say goodbye to Dad because I can just tell that he really, really misses me and that he so wishes I could stay just a little bit longer. Mom probably misses me, too, but I can't feel it radiating off her like I can from Dad. Anyway, the drive back was nice. If you have to drive anywhere, the best time to do it is always at like 10 or 11 in the morning, because nobody else is on the road. And I listened to Christmas music and sang along real loud because there wasn't anyone in the car to hear me.

Then I got back here and... well, Latonya and I watched "The Trouble with Tribbles." Yes, the Star Trek episode. It was just random fun, and mostly we looked for it just to see if we could find it. We could. So we watched that, and I took a shower (apparently my shampoo smells good... DJ liked it, anywho ^_^). After that, it was the Source Christmas shinding, for which I helped set up and cook and whatnot. We had a white elephant gift exchange; that was great fun. I brought a shot glass that lights up when you pour liquid in it ($1 at Target, baby, YEAH!) and wound up with a Halloween pumpkin carving kit. Beyond that, there was some effort to make the Source video work so we could watch the Jesus-licious Christmas thing but it didn't happen.

Oh, and Troy showed up for a few minutes while he was "getting gas." Poor Troy, he works himself to death and barely manages to squeek by. He can't even enjoy the college thing, and go to stuff like the Source party, because he's got to work. And it never seems like it's quite enough. I wish there was something I could do to help him out but I don't know what to say. He's right, there isn't much outside of teaching that can be done with a history degree. I mean, he could always go into publishing (and THEN I'd have my foot in the door to get my book published, wouldn't I!) but that's totally not his thing. It's too bad they don't pay you for being nice, cause he'd be all kinds of rich. Le sigh. But unfortunately, that's not how this place rolls. And it's not like you can be saved by being an awesome friend, so it isn't even getting him brownie points for heaven... Gah. I sound like my mother. Next time I do that, hurt me!

Still, it's too bad Latonya isn't more like Troy. I bet it'd be much easier to room with her if she was. No more conversations about how she won't date a guy unless he's never cussed (um, GOOD FRIKKEN LUCK finding one of those!) or about how WOW is teh 1337-ness and she's going to play it 24-7 when she goes home for break. Like my mom would EVER let me sit around and play video games for a month? Yeah right! I think I'd die of boredom after a week! x.x No more complaints about how I'm keeping her awake when I come home at odd hours of the night (she'd be coming home with me...). It could be good.

Le sigh. Okay, I'm done being a debby downer. I think I'm just tired, not really bummed or anything. Let me sleep, and I should be okay.

If I'm not better by tomorrow morning, hurt me. Or, you know, like, cheer me up or something. I'm going to bed now.

-Jaya-

Why must it hurt? Why? The one good thing about back when I used to bleed for three weeks straight was that at least I didn't get cramps. I might have lost tons of blood and bordered on anemia for most of the month, but at least it didn't freaking hurt.  Of course, I shouldn't complain; if I had kept going down that path I may very well have been dead by now.  And as awesome as that would have been (hey, heaven is going to be AWESOME!  I can hardly wait!), I'm kind of glad that I'm still alive.  There's still a lot I want to do.  Of course, having kids is on that list, and who knows whether I can do that or not?  The doctor isn't even sure about that.  So who knows?  But God has worked that miracle before. =D 

Oh, hey, and I came up with a joke about it!  It's bordering on blasphemy, but... meh, God has a sense of humor, too.  For those of you who don't know, this summer the PC(USA) toyed with the idea of expanding their image of the Holy Trinity (which should be "Father, Son and Holy Spirit," mind you)  to include, among other things, "Mother, Child and Womb."  That's ridiculous enough, but I was sitting there thinking about how much cramps suck, and suddenly it popped into my mind: "My Holy Spirit hurts!"  Which threw me into laughter and made me forget about the cramps, which I suppose is a good thing, but they came back eventually, which is sad. :(

Sigh.  So, having no ink and no paper (well, I have ink somewhere, I just don't know where and since I have no paper it doesn't really matter anyway), I've pretty much given up on homework.  I did all I could of what's due tomorrow.  And while I really, really should write my paper for Lit Crit, I just don't care.  Not that I would know where to start even if I did care, but that's beside the point. 

All I really want to do right now is curl up with Ashley's heating pad, but if I don't make it look like I'm working, Latonya won't stop talking to me.  Not that it stops her talking to me when I'm sitting here working (or pretending to work), but it makes her talk less.  And that's a good thing, especially now when I'm SO not in the mood to talk about her Snape costume (though it IS rather awesome...) or Lord of the Rings or WOW or Anime.  And I think I just now realize what an incredibly geeky geek she is.  Holy flying monkeys, all you need is to get rid of the contacts and get some buggy glasses, hitch up your pants and start talking in a more nasal voice, and you'll be set!  Good grief!

I'm sorry, I'm kind of bitchy when I'm cramping. :(  I can only imagine how the poor NaNoers must have thought of me last night, because I tried to be cheery but when the pain got worse, I got worse.  I did try to just shut up when that happened, instead of opening my mouth and making more of a bitch of myself, but I can't tell you how well that succeeded.  And poor Troy and DJ, I'm sure it only got worse as the night went on, so I got quieter and more cringe-y all night.  It was a good thing we watched the MST movie, because then I could laugh and laughing somehow made the pain less painful.  If that makes any sense.  >.>  At least I spared him tonight, and hopefully tomorrow night I'll be way less bitchy and I can enjoy the Halloween shindig at the Source without having to disguise the pain.

So.  Random change of subject.  My computer will, on occasion, randomly shut off.  Now, I don't mean that it goes to the blue screen of DOOM or goes through the Windows shut-down procedure or anything like that, because it doesn't.  One second it's on, and the next it's off.  It's the most annoying thing ever.  The fan is usually running its little heart out when this happens (though just because the fan comes on doesn't mean the compy will die) so I think it's overheating.  But I got that cooling pad for it, and it doesn't seem to help.  I really don't know what else to do.  I guess I'll have to take it in somewhere, but  there are a couple of problems with that.  One, I'm pretty sure the warranty has expired and it's going to be freaking EXPENSIVE to fix, and I don't know if I can afford that.  Two, I NEED my computer!  Half of my classes have huge online components, and everything must be typed in all my classes.  Not to mention that I'm doing NaNo--a computer is essential.  So I won't be able to get my compy in until December, at the earliest.  Who knows what could happen before then?  BOO! :(

Sigh.  Perhaps I should stop wasting your time with my complaints.  I'm sure you all have better things to do, and this is just a mood.  It'll pass, probably about the same time this pain passes.  Funny how those things work.  :-p  Maybe I'll go work on your artwork.  I might finally have an idea of what to make for Troy.  Maybe.  It depends on what I have up here in Fort Collins... oh, crap, and I don't have paper.  Hmmm, that might not work.

Oh!  Happy thing!  Just so I don't end on a miserable note: I was talking to my adviser, and he pulled out me SMART form (when did I become a pirate?) and looked at my name.  "Brittany Kay," he said as he handed it to me.  "What a beautiful name!"  And the way he said it, it really was beautiful, because he knows how to pronounce it properly (heck, I don't even pronounce my own name properly most of the time) and he used his Shakespeare accent, which is spiffy.  I haven't though of my name as beautiful in... well, actually, I've never thought of my name as beautiful, because everybody and her grandmother is named Brittany somebody or other.  And Mom thought it was an original name!  Bah!   But she also thought it was a beautiful name, which I never did until he said it.  And you know what?  It kind of is!  Brittany Kay... at any rate, it rolls off the tongue rather nicely.  So anyway, that little compliment totally made me happy, and it was good.  =D

-Jaya-