Thoughts on the Journey

-Wearing a mask means I had to learn a new way to breath as wearing one wakes my asthma up
-Also I want to get another masks that's more cheerful, my current one is blue with some white stripes on it
-Twisting my ankle hurt and while its almost better, I now have something that sets a time limit on my walks
-Frozen phyllo dough is tricky to work with but not impossible
-I miss my librarian work
-I've also missed writing characters being angry, writing this Cassian fic: Someone to punch was very satisfying
-Having a new laptop is great but laptops eat up so much memory
-I really miss browsing in stores or places that aren't pharmacies, grocery or liquor stores
-Being patient worked and I'm writing again

This day has been good then awful. I had lunch with my brother and niece, read the paper and went to turn on my laptop and it didn't work. I troubleshooted but a stupid spill last night didn't make it happy. At least in the phone, the help desk guy was understanding. I just feeling thrown off. So tomorrow I go to the nearest Apple Store and try not to fret too much. I know I can manage but I'll be traveling soon and my life seems full of waiting and hoping at the moment. This is just one more thing to worry about.

Since I was in a book mood, I read a wonderful romance novel called Three Weeks with Lady X and now I'm having a late dinner. I'll be happy to know what's going on tomorrow but for now will be slow on my threads.

My birthday yesterday was really wonderful and as is normal with my family, its going to stretch for a while longer. I started the day by opening the package that my parents sent me which had some beautiful blue glass earrings and the Stacy Schiff Cleopatra book.

Today I just spent the first half or so of my Amazon gift card from one of my brothers on A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones, The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer, Welcome to Bordertown and an Ignenuitea pot with four green teas.

When my parents arrive at the end of next week, I'm going to get a new Mac laptop as a graduation/birthday gift which I'm looking forward to. Mac users, what kinds do you have and what do you recommend? I think this computer knows I'm going to move on from it as the screen's been acting up more.

Thank you to everyone for the good wishes, I feel quite blessed with such wonderful friends and for all the help figuring out how to spend my gift card. One of the great joys of yesterday was that I was able to talk to my oldest friend, we've known each other since we were about a year old on my walk home from work. I'll be doing another purchase at some point too, I love having my only worry being deciding what to get.

Yesterday I was reminded of just how nice people in Ann Arbor are because so many people smiled and wished me Happy Birthday when I told them. As a treat, I bought a sundae at the Ben and Jerry's store on State Street and it was good but filling. I don't eat ice cream very often and I'd forgotten how heavy it can be. Sadly I finished my first pot of homemade mint tea but I'm going to make another one. Homemade iced tea is one of the best parts of summer.

School stuff is also full of interesting things, tomorrow in the early morning I have meeting to help out with the Ann Arbor Book Festival after my parents leave. This is something I've wanted to help with since I started at SI but the timing never seemed to work out. If this comes together, I'll get paid and be able to help with children's activities.

I have a paper to write this weekend that I think will go much faster than the other one and then I get about two weeks off from class in which I work on my grant. The idea I have isn't in as good a form as I'd like so I'm going to push it into shape before I turn in a draft.

This day has started off amazing. I got to work which as always was quiet and so I spent most of it watching my Twitter feed and how it exploded around 11:20 when Egypt became free. I'm so amazed at how quickly things happened there and reading the tweets of people there and around the world saying, we're with you and then celebrating. It gives me a huge amount of hope for well everything. It also makes the fact that I'm going to a meeting to make sure I can graduate a little less worrisome since that's one small thing compared to the great change that just occurred.

I was hoping to be online before that meeting at 3:30 but for some reason, the lab computer I'm using it set for a huge resolution and whenever I try to fix it, it gets messed up. Instead I think I'm going to enjoy reading Bloodroot, a fantastic book, thank you sardonicynic and relax.

I might search out another computer but other than this meeting the rest of the day and evening are mine and I'm just happy to be warm and in a good place.

I hate this week a lot. Last night I was working on the assignment for my Online Search course and I thought I did it okay. This class has handouts and powerpoints aplenty so I was referring to them all over the place. In class I mentioned mine since I didn't get a result so I figured I did something wrong.

Now one reason I don't like this class is the professor does this thing of being incredibly sarcastic and kind of mean, but its hard to tell if she really thinks we're that stupid or if its just her way. It doesn't make me feel comfortable or like I actually want to listen to her, because I have to sort through all this stuff to find out what's she's teaching. Yet as she kept repeating in class today, she's been teaching this same way of searching since 1987. It got really annoying, we're using an old system to search databases since supposedly it will teach us how to truly do searching. I find it tough and feel like I'm having to learn programming again. All the things that are useful end up buried under a flurry of handouts and sarcastic comments and she does know stuff somehow.

Now the thing that's made me all tense and annoyed. Class was in the morning, after class I went to get my laptop checked out and now have my laptop in the queue of a good repair place. So I get home I think around 1 and I don't think I checked my school email. I started my assignment that's due tomorrow and now have a nice draft. Some time around 4 or so, I see there's an email from this prof. Basically she goes, there are tons of things wrong with your assignment and I want to speak to you, I'm around at these times. Well, the time she mentioned was this afternoon and I'm home and its too late. The time she recommends for tomorrow is when I'm working and this is all in this I need to see you and this is when you'll see me tone.

I wrote her an email apologizing for just getting the email, saying what wouldn't work tomorrow and would next week work. I've yet to hear from her which is freaking me out. I've talked about this in chat and on Twitter too, but I need to write it out so its not stuck in my head. I really hate this class, but its too late to drop and start another one. I'll get through this, but gah, I hate this. the_croupier, whenever you're online, ping me, you've taken this class, hopefully its not as bad as it feels.

Please distract me with something, I'll take prompts, I'll take silly things just help.

ETA I got an email back that reads like an order, you will be at my office at noon. So that's what I'll be doing after my morning shift. I hate this.

Apparently after two hours of trying things, HP told me that I need to hook my laptop to an external monitor to find out what's about to fail.

Hopefully its something cheap like the graphics card and not anything involving the motherboard. HP was really helpful, I think I made the HP customer service guy happy, because I understood so much of what he was talking about and we were able to just talk as things processed.

Now I'm backing the few things that aren't backed up so that things are alright. Hopefully the monitor won't act up too much during my shift tonight, I'd feel horrible if that happened while I was helping someone.

I've had this laptop for about a year and a half, that's too soon for it to break. Though I wouldn't mind getting a Mac at some point. My whining about how heavy my laptop is, is not an excuse to break. I like my solid laptop with its big screen.

I really need to get a good photo thing on this computer because I feel so silly that I don't know how to get rid of that text box thing. My mom has a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements that I might put on this computer unless there's a program others can recommend as better. So yes, here's mine though its nowhere near as good as everyone else's and then I'm off to make shortbread and afghans.

Now edited with a new and improved version and yay I figured out how to make text transparent and it was much simpler than I expected.

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit "random" or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations" or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on "explore the last seven days" or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together:

It turns out something went wrong in a way the guy hasn't seen before so none of my stuff ended up being saved properly on the HD.

I'm going to take it to someone who knows about computers along with my old laptop and have them pull it off because damn it, want my stuff.

Also I appear to be sick which sucks even more.

Well I have a number of things set up, Windows Live One Care is being odd and I'm not the only one having this problem but so far all the online suggestions aren't helping.

I've decided since tomorrow and Friday I'll be in NYC with my parents that I'm going to worry about it later rather than slogging through all the steps to reach a real person just yet.

I will later but for now I'm happy and going to start moving files over so I can change the background. Oh and also I'm having trouble installing itunes on my Vista, anyone have suggestions?

Life is looking good, one of my mother's friends from college is coming over for lunch, I somehow got up at 10:30 am after going to sleep sometime after 4 am because wordsthatfail and dynastessa are just that awesome.

Then woke up to find out that my new laptop has shipped and might even be here tomorrow which makes me so amazingly happy, I thought I might have to wait until the end of the week for it.

Also here is a fun meme from alas_a_llama:

Association Meme

Comment to this post and I will give you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this to your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

( New Zealand, America, Greek Classics, Libraries and Robin Hood Stories. )