things that made me happy today:
--making key lime pistachio biscotti
--the fact that the lucero shirt i bought at the thrift store a few weeks ago fits
--shopping at the int'l food store w/L
--realizing chef prob doesn't know abt said store, and looking fwd to telling him abt it
--finding mamey (sp?) at said store
--L taking me to dinner at a vietnamese restaurant near my house
--seeing L in general, even if only for a few hours

things that made me cranky today:
--dozing off when i should've been making shortbread or banana cake
--dozing off when i should've been catching up on RE work
--dozing off, making tonight's sleep screwy
--not hearing back from the claims adjuster re my flooded car!

the highlight of my day today: a flash flood just as i was supposed to be leaving for work. insurance company's recommended shop is closed til monday. wanted to work tonight, restaurant is surely wall to wall people right now because the beaches are closed... and now obviously i need the $$! fortunately i have comprehensive coverage, unfortunately i do not have rental reimbursement coverage. ugh.



edit: roomie got an even better pic. i was still in work clothes, optimistic that the water would stop rising and i'd be able to go to work, so i didn't want to wade into the water that was lapping up into the yard, but she was off today...

truth be told, i know my very first record ever was a 45 of joan jett & the blackhearts, but my first album was definitely either thriller or rio. they came out the same year, and my memory has been blunted by time and wear & tear, but let's just say it was thriller... what does it say about me that after i heard the news about mj, i thought, hm, there's #3... and thus when i heard that jeff goldblum was also dead, i was completely kerfluffered. knew it wasn't a full moon, and damn, i'd just recently developed a little crush on him-- they say some men get sexier with age, and he for sure proves that point. ed, farrah, michael, only one was a specific icon in *my* lifetime, yet there i was at work bummed that goldblum was gone. and so happy, when i got home and googled him, to find that he is still alive and kicking.

just sayin.

Just when I was thinking “damn, my life has gotten boring…” A few nights ago, there was a shooting RIGHT outside the house. Somewhere between 9:30 and 10pm, landlady/roomie and I were outside smoking, with the dog in tow, when two guys came walking up the street (out of the pedestrian alley actually—I don’t know what those are properly called, having never lived in an area of townhouses before, but it’s a walkway between rows of houses that gives access to backyards). They were talking a little too loudly and not moving in any particular direction in any sort of hurry, and they gave me a bad vibe. I finished my smoke, waited for roomie to finish hers, and then went inside. Odd thing was, the dog saw the guys too, and paid attention, but did not bark. Mind you, this dog barks at just about everything—if a paper towel falls loose on trash day and comes to rest anywhere in her sight line, she goes nuts. I closed the curtain behind us and started making some dinner. Meanwhile I could hear the guys getting a little louder, even through the closed windows, and I said to roomie, it’s rather odd that the dog is not barking at those loud guys, no? and she said, true to her (IMO misguided) notion that her dog is smart, “she must just know that they’re ok guys,” at which point, on cue, five or six shots rang out. Other roomie had been upstairs in his room, and when the guys got loud, he turned off the lights and started watching, & saw the whole thing go down. Apparently, after roomie & I went inside, someone appeared in a car who was pissed at these guys, and vice versa—the theory we’re going with is that the guys on foot ripped off the guy in the car earlier, then wandered into our neighborhood to hide, but were tracked down. words were exchanged, the guys on foot shot at the guy in the car, & everyone scattered. my car, parked mere yards away, emerged unscathed, miraculously. (I just today learned that the neighbors diagonally across the corner were not so lucky.) the cops came, looked for shell casings & apparently couldn’t find any, we answered their questions as best we could, the end. Other than the dog not barking, I also found it rather disturbing that we were the only people outside once the cops got there. I mean, of course, I don’t expect people to move toward gunfire, and there aren’t usually many people out that late around here—I think there are a few 2nd & 3rd shift workers in the immediate vicinity, and certainly early bird workers who might’ve been asleep already-- but still, the little paranoid part of my brain paused for a bit on the nightmare retaliation scenarios you hear about.

So, of course I started looking on craigslist for a new place, but really, the neighborhood has been quiet up til then, and this kind of shit can happen anywhere. I’d really rather wait to move until I can afford to get my own place, where I can get my crap out of storage and settle in for a while, but I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude. As it stands, notice-wise, I’m here til the end of may—paying to be here, anyway, per my lease agreement, and I’m not in a position to pay rent on two places at once—having a hard enough time just paying for the one. So, here’s a little shout-out to the universe: hook me up with a damn job already!

Continued the school research last night—looks like the entire IT AAS I started at JSR can be done online here-- score! Was thinking I should finish the AA first, but I’ll find an advisor at some point and get some advice. Need to ask whether I’m eligible to do CLEP for math & science—apparently some schools won’t let you CLEP if you’ve already attempted to take a similar class. I have, but not at a VCCS school, so gotta find out if that counts. If so, this semester while I’m out of school, I could study up for those & then be ready for the tests whenever. Figure I should study up for them regardless—worst case, I’ll be more prepared for an actual class, and it’ll get me back in the habit of studying. Fingers crossed for CLEP though—3 cr of math plus 8 cr of science = abt $175 for tests versus $1100 for classes. Did some poking around on (awesome!) OpenCourseWare sites for a suitable prep class—haven’t found anything quite right yet but I’m still looking... plenty of other fun stuff there to keep me occupied in the interim.

High on the must-do list for 2009 is to get back into school. The only real barrier to that is money. TCC seems to offer more distance learning classes than JSR did, so the time/schedule/transportation issues that I ran into in the past shouldn’t be an issue. I ran out of financial aid eligibility a long time ago, unfortunately… spring classes start tomorrow, so no dice there, but I figured I’d get the ball rolling, fill out the paperwork, etc… so I went to the website to fill out the application online, and naturally, given my loooong history of ridiculous paperwork problems w/colleges, after filling out basically just my name & campus selection, I got an error message. Of course. “Information conflicts with existing records, sorry, you can’t do this.” OF COURSE. This kind of thing has happened pretty much EVERY SINGLE TIME I have tried to sign up for classes. Every time, I think, maybe the universe is putting these barriers in my way to let me know this is the wrong path… but screw that. I suppose this means a campus visit is in my future, where I will undoubtedly be sent from office to office, “oh, you need to talk to X person,” who will say the same about someone else. Woo hoo, I can’t wait! Actually, I WILL wait—no sense fighting the masses the first week of the semester for a problem that doesn’t need to be solved for a few months. Sigh…

In the meantime I should get cracking on having my zillion transcripts sent over (again, after this week), since that too will surely be drama-filled. Last I checked, VCU can’t seem to get it through their heads that I do NOT owe them two grand anymore. I have sent them the requested paperwork to prove it via mail and again via fax—at some point I will probably have to physically take it there in person (and document it with a video camera: “here’s a close-up of the piece of paper… here’s me handing said piece of paper to the person in charge of this whole department… here’s me delivering duplicates to every single other person who ever worked in this office..”). ODU’s website links to check status/transcripts don’t even work (again, might be b/c of busy week)—but at least that’s in town, not as much of a pain to do in person. TCC and JSR already screwed up my school ID #s once, so I have to keep an eye out for that—I’m guessing that’s the source of the online app problem. (That was fun—after 2 years or so at JSR, suddenly my school ID# didn’t work, and their answer was that *I* screwed up by accidentally using my old TCC ID#. Problem with that theory was, this particular ID# system didn’t even exist when I went to TCC, so I wasn’t aware that # existed, making it awfully difficult for me to use it at JSR.)

Next up, I’m sure TCC will lose my previous records from there—although that trick has already happened: One summer I decided to take a writing class at ODU, just for kicks, with Sheri Reynolds, and they had lost all evidence that I had ever previously attended there. Which was no big deal, really, except that I truthfully checked “yes” on the app when they asked if I’d ever attended, so I guess it got flagged as a lie. I probably won’t ever need the credits from that class (I’ve taken essentially the same class several times elsewhere), and the economics class I took there a million years ago will probably be too old to use for any gened reqs, so I don’t particularly care whether they ever get my transcripts straight or not, EXCEPT that I don’t want to get screwed for not “claiming” everything.

Perhaps if I start pushing this rock back up the hill now, this month at least, I might, just might, have it straightened out in time to enroll in summer classes. Did I say the only barrier is money? That and the lifelong paperwork curse hanging over me. Wonder which one is going to prove easier to overcome?

Since my last post:

June: forever vacated the beloved Richmond apartment, loaded the honda to the brim, put everything else in storage, moseyed down to daytona beach.
July: missed the tom waits show, don’t wanna talk about it, except to say: GRR! To make myself feel better, took a wacky side trip to the northeast that won’t be detailed here. (shame, really.)
Jul/Aug/Sept: chilled in florida, did a whole lot of nothing, in a good way. Decided nonetheless that I don’t want to move there just yet.
October: came back up the coast via the slow roads, stopping here and there—carriage ride in Charleston, roadside barbecue joint in Georgia, such like. Arrived back in VA in time for bro’s lovely Halloween wedding. folks & grandmother up from texas, spent a week w/them as planned, nice.
November: just before their planned departure, mom got scary sick, pneumonia and meningitis, strapped to a bed in ICU for days. Miraculously got thru it despite her beat-up immune system, but required a few extra weeks in wmsburg.
December: catching my breath, renting a room in Virginia beach while I decide if maybe this is where I wanna live for a while. job hunting, ugh.

What’s next??

who got tom waits tickets? I GOT TOM WAITS TICKETS!!!!!

why, hello there, 2008! when did you get here? and what exactly is it i'm supposed to do with you?!?

seems i should relocate, for starters. and maybe rethink my life, and get off my arse. didn't i hear that same nonsense from 2007? hmph. perhaps this year i shall listen.

well. despite beginning the day on hold, waiting for the fedex guy, i miraculously managed to get my open house lists done, unpack the new surround system and get it halfway put together (need another set of hands to finish, to be sure i don't drop a second tv this year), AND made serious headway on my bake-sale baking. i had one or two recipes left in mind for tonight, then off to bed so as to wake up in time to get the goodies to the actual bake sale. and then... ugh.

already done: brownies, oatmeal butterscotch cookies, pumpkin bread, toffee biscotti...



brownie cupcakes (alright, i confess-- these came from a mix)...



and then, the key lime squares i've been so excited to try. i swear i followed the recipe to a T up til this point-- i adapted the streusel topping to add coconut, but that part hadn't made it to the oven yet. i was waiting for the first two layers to cook, sitting in the living room taking a smoke break, when i heard a disturbing crash coming from the kitchen. i tiptoed in, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and then i slowly opened the oven to find this:



looks like it's time for a drink.