Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Can I have my deposit back?
Since I'm sitting here in the library today until they kick me out, I thought I would play my new favorite game, which is to wander through my new university's website until something freaks me out and I have to go sit quietly in a corner and bite my nails. Today, it was the library's website. I know I posted here earlier with a rant about how they use Dewey, which I hate more than I can express, but apparently it gets worse. Even though I'm a postgraduate student, I'm only allowed 15 books at a time. Fifteen. Also, interlibrary loans apparently cost lots of money. USC let me have 200 at a time as an undergraduate, and interlibrary loans were free. Fifteen books at a time is simply not going to work out for me. I need about ten books a week just to function (I can't leave the house without at least four on me) and since I can only bring about five of my own books with me (enough to keep me going until they give me my university card and I can hit up the library), and I can't buy any while I'm there, I'll be using up my entire limit on the books I require to function, and I won't have any left over for things I'm supposed to read for class. Even worse, there's the dissertation, which will also hit my book limit hard. And I have to pay for my interlibrary loans? So completely unacceptable. And uncivilized. *foam*
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Peanut Butter
So, I’m not sure what to do. I’ve been completely unable to figure out what the peanut butter situation in England is. I admit that I haven’t actually sat down and demanded that Google tell me if there is peanut butter in England, but when I search for other things I keep running across conversations that go like this:
Brit: "We do so have peanut butter in England! We’re just as civilized as you Americans!"
American: "Yeah, but your peanut butter tastes like roadkill. Plus, you all talk funny."
My family actually knows people that have not only been to England, but have actually gone to the same school I’m going to, but this hasn’t been all that helpful. My dad is, understandably, reluctant to ask his co-worker about peanut butter, and my brother refuses to ask his friend’s dad because he doesn’t think I should be eating peanut butter at all (he is under the mistaken impression that he is in charge of the size of my ass). I tried pointing out that if you’re a vegetarian, and you hate cheese, there isn’t much else you can put in your sandwiches, but he has been unmoved. For this reason, I have spent all summer morosely devouring fluffernutters and peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwiches, and if this has had a negative effect on the size of my ass, it is entirely my brother’s fault.
Brit: "We do so have peanut butter in England! We’re just as civilized as you Americans!"
American: "Yeah, but your peanut butter tastes like roadkill. Plus, you all talk funny."
My family actually knows people that have not only been to England, but have actually gone to the same school I’m going to, but this hasn’t been all that helpful. My dad is, understandably, reluctant to ask his co-worker about peanut butter, and my brother refuses to ask his friend’s dad because he doesn’t think I should be eating peanut butter at all (he is under the mistaken impression that he is in charge of the size of my ass). I tried pointing out that if you’re a vegetarian, and you hate cheese, there isn’t much else you can put in your sandwiches, but he has been unmoved. For this reason, I have spent all summer morosely devouring fluffernutters and peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwiches, and if this has had a negative effect on the size of my ass, it is entirely my brother’s fault.
Relatives = suck
I’m still at the coast house, but I’m hiding at the library. (Come on, where else would I go?) Why? My cousin is here. Although there’s the probability that we share some DNA (although you could never tell by looking at us) I don’t get along with her particularly well. Do you know how, sometimes, you’re in a room with someone and you can hear that horrible grating noise your personalities make as they clash, and the other person is totally oblivious? Yeah. (Or is that just me? Whatever. It usually is.)
Also, my cousin is, to borrow my dad’s phrase for her, completely batshit insane. And it might surprise you to learn this, but I am just the tiniest bit sarcastic. No, really, I am. Anyway, we tend to have conversations like this:
Cousin: I think I’ll go to South America and write the Great American Novel and apply to grad school while I’m there. (This is her actual plan for the next year; I thought about making something up, but the truth is more absurd and entertaining than anything I could invent.)
Me: *snerk*
Thus, it’s best if I stay here with my Latin books until the library closes, because if I go home I’m going to have to give myself timeouts every 30 seconds.
Also, my cousin is, to borrow my dad’s phrase for her, completely batshit insane. And it might surprise you to learn this, but I am just the tiniest bit sarcastic. No, really, I am. Anyway, we tend to have conversations like this:
Cousin: I think I’ll go to South America and write the Great American Novel and apply to grad school while I’m there. (This is her actual plan for the next year; I thought about making something up, but the truth is more absurd and entertaining than anything I could invent.)
Me: *snerk*
Thus, it’s best if I stay here with my Latin books until the library closes, because if I go home I’m going to have to give myself timeouts every 30 seconds.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
This is not a weight-loss blog...
...because the last thing we need is another one of those. But I went to enter my running time into FitDay this morning, and I found that I've been running for a year as of this weekend, and I figured I should say something about that.
I have now gotten up before dawn 6 days a week for a year to go running. Don't ask me how I did it, because I couldn't tell you. I had to, because I refuse to go running during the day for two reasons - there are more people/cars out during the day, and they annoy me to the point where I'd have to turn around and go straight home, and also during the summer it's way, way more pleasant to go running before the sun comes up and it gets hot. Honestly, though, getting up before dawn 6 days out of every week sucks fetid donkey balls. I don't know what else to tell you. It does get a little better after about 8 months of doing it, but it still sucks.
The other thing that sucks - my feet. I have mutant feet. To begin with, they're large and have no arch; and then there's the fact that they don't even match, because one of them has a mild deformity (kind of like a bunion, but more so; the bones are bent funny). This means that finding running shoes is hell because the bad foot is about an inch wider than the good foot; I generally buy shoes that are a little loose on one and a little tight on the other, and then suffer for a week until the too-small one stretches out and stops causing all my toes to go numb. In addition, I have arthritis in the bad foot, and it tends to act up on weeks when I'm breaking in my new shoes or increasing my mileage, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I mean, I get that I could take a painkiller before I go out, but this has always seemed like a bad idea to me; what if I hurt my ankle or knee, can't feel it because of the painkillers, and end up really injuring myself? So yeah, mutant feet = not cool.
When I started, I'm pretty sure I could run about 1/8th of a mile. Now I usually run 5 miles a day, unless it's really hot or I'm not feeling well, in which case I run three, or unless I'm having a good day, in which case I run 7 or 8. Five is my average, though. And it's an easy five - I don't breathe hard, or suffer from noodle legs or stitches, or get that terrifying coppery taste in my mouth.
I can't really tell you how much weight I've lost, because my cheap scale finally bit the dust and my mother's digital scale gives me a different weight. I would estimate it to be somewhere in the area of 50 pounds, but I can't really be sure.
I can give you a better approximation of how much my body changed size, if you're interested. I would estimate that my starting jeans size was a 16/18 (the ones I was wearing used letters, though, and I have since gotten rid of them, so again, I'm not all that sure) and it now seems to be a 10/12. If I remember correctly, my starting measurements were about 47-36-47; they are now 40-29-40 (yes, I know I'm still on the large side. Go troll somewhere else, because I'm not interested). Starting bra size was a 40D; it now seems to be a 36DD.
On the more interesting side - the running seems to control my depression better than medication did. I really don't advocate this for everyone, (good lord, take your meds!) but it works in my case because mine is caused by a chemical imbalance. It's still possible to derail my fragile brain chemistry with too much alcohol or not enough sleep or, even worse, a combination of the two, but Jesus H Macy, it's about 50497286467 times better than taking Zoloft, where I basically felt nothing except the urge to rip the heads off everyone I encountered. With running, I basically feel okay. Some days I am happy, some days I am anxious and upset, and they seem to mostly balance out evenly. I am cranky, but crankiness is part of my basic makeup, and I no longer find myself shouting at people for no reason. This alone would be enough to make me drag myself out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn every morning for the rest of my life, even if I had remained a size 16.
No one else seems to have this next problem except my brother, but I will mention it here anyway. I used to have a problem with ankles that were overly flexible - I would be walking along, one of my ankles would give out, my foot would roll under, and down I would go onto my face. It occurred to me sometime around May that it'd been a while since that had happened to me, so I started actively watching for it, and I seem to be cured. I don't know what happened or if it was even the running, but I suspect that it was because David does not run and apparently it still happens to him.
Then there are all the standard benefits of exercise; you sleep better, you need less sleep, you feel better, etc. Not so interesting. You can read about that elsewhere.
In conclusion - I love running. I intend to do it for the rest of my life, if only so I never, ever have to deal with antidepressants again.
Also, I'm leaving for the coast house again. I'll be back at the end of August or the beginning of September.
I have now gotten up before dawn 6 days a week for a year to go running. Don't ask me how I did it, because I couldn't tell you. I had to, because I refuse to go running during the day for two reasons - there are more people/cars out during the day, and they annoy me to the point where I'd have to turn around and go straight home, and also during the summer it's way, way more pleasant to go running before the sun comes up and it gets hot. Honestly, though, getting up before dawn 6 days out of every week sucks fetid donkey balls. I don't know what else to tell you. It does get a little better after about 8 months of doing it, but it still sucks.
The other thing that sucks - my feet. I have mutant feet. To begin with, they're large and have no arch; and then there's the fact that they don't even match, because one of them has a mild deformity (kind of like a bunion, but more so; the bones are bent funny). This means that finding running shoes is hell because the bad foot is about an inch wider than the good foot; I generally buy shoes that are a little loose on one and a little tight on the other, and then suffer for a week until the too-small one stretches out and stops causing all my toes to go numb. In addition, I have arthritis in the bad foot, and it tends to act up on weeks when I'm breaking in my new shoes or increasing my mileage, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I mean, I get that I could take a painkiller before I go out, but this has always seemed like a bad idea to me; what if I hurt my ankle or knee, can't feel it because of the painkillers, and end up really injuring myself? So yeah, mutant feet = not cool.
When I started, I'm pretty sure I could run about 1/8th of a mile. Now I usually run 5 miles a day, unless it's really hot or I'm not feeling well, in which case I run three, or unless I'm having a good day, in which case I run 7 or 8. Five is my average, though. And it's an easy five - I don't breathe hard, or suffer from noodle legs or stitches, or get that terrifying coppery taste in my mouth.
I can't really tell you how much weight I've lost, because my cheap scale finally bit the dust and my mother's digital scale gives me a different weight. I would estimate it to be somewhere in the area of 50 pounds, but I can't really be sure.
I can give you a better approximation of how much my body changed size, if you're interested. I would estimate that my starting jeans size was a 16/18 (the ones I was wearing used letters, though, and I have since gotten rid of them, so again, I'm not all that sure) and it now seems to be a 10/12. If I remember correctly, my starting measurements were about 47-36-47; they are now 40-29-40 (yes, I know I'm still on the large side. Go troll somewhere else, because I'm not interested). Starting bra size was a 40D; it now seems to be a 36DD.
On the more interesting side - the running seems to control my depression better than medication did. I really don't advocate this for everyone, (good lord, take your meds!) but it works in my case because mine is caused by a chemical imbalance. It's still possible to derail my fragile brain chemistry with too much alcohol or not enough sleep or, even worse, a combination of the two, but Jesus H Macy, it's about 50497286467 times better than taking Zoloft, where I basically felt nothing except the urge to rip the heads off everyone I encountered. With running, I basically feel okay. Some days I am happy, some days I am anxious and upset, and they seem to mostly balance out evenly. I am cranky, but crankiness is part of my basic makeup, and I no longer find myself shouting at people for no reason. This alone would be enough to make me drag myself out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn every morning for the rest of my life, even if I had remained a size 16.
No one else seems to have this next problem except my brother, but I will mention it here anyway. I used to have a problem with ankles that were overly flexible - I would be walking along, one of my ankles would give out, my foot would roll under, and down I would go onto my face. It occurred to me sometime around May that it'd been a while since that had happened to me, so I started actively watching for it, and I seem to be cured. I don't know what happened or if it was even the running, but I suspect that it was because David does not run and apparently it still happens to him.
Then there are all the standard benefits of exercise; you sleep better, you need less sleep, you feel better, etc. Not so interesting. You can read about that elsewhere.
In conclusion - I love running. I intend to do it for the rest of my life, if only so I never, ever have to deal with antidepressants again.
Also, I'm leaving for the coast house again. I'll be back at the end of August or the beginning of September.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Evil Superpowers
This morning, my mother presented me with a library copy of Marya Hornbacher's new book. As I prepared to drag it off to the sunroom immediately, because I have to give it back before the weekend and I don't want to be distracted by any other new books crossing my path, she said, "You know, I processed this when it first came out and then it slipped my mind. But last week someone at another library requested it, so I remembered it and said 'Hell no, you aren't getting it!' I decided we should take it out for a couple weeks and read it before I send it out." I knew I should have gone to library school. I had no idea you were allowed to do evil things like that. When I was working at the library, the fact that I was allowed to check books in and immediately check them back out to myself was enough to fill me with glee. Now, I wanna be able able to preempt other peoples' requests because I like the book and want to read it first.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Apparently, I have "Californian" tattooed on my forehead
My running sweatpants and shoes both gave out on the same day, so I had to go shopping. While I was there, I bought an umbrella, because I don't own one. (The Handbook for Clueless International Students said to bring one in my carry-on, so I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that England maybe has a little problem with precipitation.) I got a black purse-sized umbrella. I had the same kind in California, until it turned inside out and I decided to get rid of it. I brought it home and put it on the table, and my dad took a good look at it and started to smirk. Apparently, England laughs at my tiny umbrella. He gives it maybe a week before it also turns inside out and goes to umbrella heaven.
In my own defense, buying a bigger umbrella would have meant one less book I could cram into my carry-on.
In my own defense, buying a bigger umbrella would have meant one less book I could cram into my carry-on.
Wait a minute, can we slow down?
While I was away for the past two weeks, lots of things happened. Enough things so that when my parents showed up to pry me out of the coast house and haul me back here, they also shouted at me for not leaving my phone on (you can understand the wonderful irony here when I tell you that my parents feel that cell phones exist only for making outgoing calls, and should be left off at all other times so that people can't talk to you). They were all good things, but they have combined to reduce me to a state of nail-biting panic.
My loan got approved. You have no idea how relieved I am. If it had been rejected, that would have put an abrupt stop to all of this. It pays all my tuition and I need every cent of it. I'm hoping the exchange rate will improve and I won't need all of it, but I'm not holding my breath. If I work 10 hours a week (my last work-study job will give me glowing references) we can just about afford everything else. I'm trying not to think about the part where I have to pay it all back. I'm hoping to pay for my PhD by some other means (grants, prostitution, bank robbery - I'll worry about that when I get there.)
I got a housing offer. They gave me one of the cheapest single rooms they have. I have to share a kitchen and a bathroom (alas, there are no heated towel rails in my future) and the dorm was built in the 70's, but I nearly wept with gratitude because I do not have to share my room. I would like to never share a bedroom with anyone ever again as long as I live. (It's a darn good thing I aspire to be single.) There are currently two people in the world I would happily share an apartment with, and I am capable of sharing a bedroom for up to about two weeks, but if I had been assigned a double, I'm afraid I would have had to kill and eat my roommate during the first week. That would probably have gotten me thrown out of the program and shipped back to America. (Okay, so actually, in reality, it is almost impossible to get a double room, but this is a big point of concern for me and I am highly paranoid about it.)
I got my International Student ID card. My mother had a fit of hand-wringing while I was away the last time and applied for it (pretending she was me) but it was actually a pretty good idea. It comes with travel and basic medical insurance (and if I die there, they have to send my body back) and it also works as a phone card. I'm also supposed to go to the AAA and get an international driver's license. This was my dad's idea. I really have no idea why he is so set on it. I have no business whatsoever driving a car in England. Some days, I'm not even sure I should be allowed to drive a car in America. Even if some catastrophe occurs and forces me to find a place that will rent me a car, I'm not sure I could anyway, because apparently the British like stick shifts (I don't really blame them, their gas prices terrify me) and I couldn't drive a stick shift if my life depended on it. And finally, I'm allowed to drive all I want with my US driver's license for a full year. Since the only time I might actually want a car is when my family is visiting and wants to look at things, my dad may as well rent the car and drive it while I cower in the back and cover my eyes. But whatever, it will take me 5 minutes.
While I was at the coast house, I had to go get passport photos taken. I need one for the visa application, one for the ISIC, and the school, for no discernible reason, wants me to show up with six more in my carry-on luggage (along with my diploma, which would cost me $100 to replace, and some sealed transcripts. I wish they said why, but I'm afraid to question them in case they take a closer look at my file and realize they didn't actually mean to admit me). Anyway, the woman taking the passport photos used a digital camera, and showed me the picture afterwards to see if it was okay. I didn't appear to have a double chin or chunks of hair standing on end, so I said something along the lines of "That's fine; it doesn't have to look good." I honestly think she would have reacted less strongly if I had said "That's great; you can't see the oozing sores at all." But anyway, the point I meant to make when I started this paragraph was that my mother, after having spent a good three hours nagging me about having to get this done before I came back, took my photos and promptly lost them the next morning. After tearing through the house for three hours and actually going through all the drifts of mail stacked precariously on the dining room table (in which she found a Netflix movie we had reported lost) she found them stuffed in the book she was reading. This would be the first phase of the nail-biting anxiety I was talking about earlier - we wouldn't have had time to go out and get more, because tomorrow morning I have to go to Newark to get my biometrics data done.
The second part of the nail-biting anxiety came when I said to myself this evening "Well, damn. The school has taken two deposits and isn't going to give them back, my flight is booked, I have a fixed address over there, my government has actually agreed to give the school a whole lot of money to take me, which means that my visa will almost certainly be approved, and consequently it looks as though I'm actually going to get put on a plane in late September and sent over there. Maybe I should take another look at the course requirements." I have to admit, I didn't look too closely at them before I applied. There wasn't any reason to. At the time, I gave myself about a 5% chance of getting into this particular school, and now that they've accepted me and I've gone back and looked at them more closely, I think in retrospect I had well under a 1% chance of getting in (particularly as I never finished my application.) I'm still not convinced there wasn't a catastrophic error in the admissions department; they're British, they might be too polite to tell me. Anyway, I wandered on over to their program website, and then spent the next 15 minutes biting my kneecaps in terror. One of the reasons I assumed I wouldn't get in was that they had written on their front page in letters of fire that I MUST HAVE A RELEVANT UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE. Consequently, they are assuming that I'm going over there with some sort of clue what I'm doing. And besides that, I didn't check their ranking in the field of archaeology, and now I find that it's ridiculously high - high enough that it kind of makes sense to just stay there for my PhD rather than try for Oxford like I was thinking I might do. So now, I'm afraid that I will get kicked out in my first week for complete incompetence. I mean, I'm smart and I work hard, but I simply have no idea what I'm doing. But, if you recall, I predicted this would happen earlier in the summer, so I'm going to tell myself to chill in a stern voice and spend a day or two in the library.
My loan got approved. You have no idea how relieved I am. If it had been rejected, that would have put an abrupt stop to all of this. It pays all my tuition and I need every cent of it. I'm hoping the exchange rate will improve and I won't need all of it, but I'm not holding my breath. If I work 10 hours a week (my last work-study job will give me glowing references) we can just about afford everything else. I'm trying not to think about the part where I have to pay it all back. I'm hoping to pay for my PhD by some other means (grants, prostitution, bank robbery - I'll worry about that when I get there.)
I got a housing offer. They gave me one of the cheapest single rooms they have. I have to share a kitchen and a bathroom (alas, there are no heated towel rails in my future) and the dorm was built in the 70's, but I nearly wept with gratitude because I do not have to share my room. I would like to never share a bedroom with anyone ever again as long as I live. (It's a darn good thing I aspire to be single.) There are currently two people in the world I would happily share an apartment with, and I am capable of sharing a bedroom for up to about two weeks, but if I had been assigned a double, I'm afraid I would have had to kill and eat my roommate during the first week. That would probably have gotten me thrown out of the program and shipped back to America. (Okay, so actually, in reality, it is almost impossible to get a double room, but this is a big point of concern for me and I am highly paranoid about it.)
I got my International Student ID card. My mother had a fit of hand-wringing while I was away the last time and applied for it (pretending she was me) but it was actually a pretty good idea. It comes with travel and basic medical insurance (and if I die there, they have to send my body back) and it also works as a phone card. I'm also supposed to go to the AAA and get an international driver's license. This was my dad's idea. I really have no idea why he is so set on it. I have no business whatsoever driving a car in England. Some days, I'm not even sure I should be allowed to drive a car in America. Even if some catastrophe occurs and forces me to find a place that will rent me a car, I'm not sure I could anyway, because apparently the British like stick shifts (I don't really blame them, their gas prices terrify me) and I couldn't drive a stick shift if my life depended on it. And finally, I'm allowed to drive all I want with my US driver's license for a full year. Since the only time I might actually want a car is when my family is visiting and wants to look at things, my dad may as well rent the car and drive it while I cower in the back and cover my eyes. But whatever, it will take me 5 minutes.
While I was at the coast house, I had to go get passport photos taken. I need one for the visa application, one for the ISIC, and the school, for no discernible reason, wants me to show up with six more in my carry-on luggage (along with my diploma, which would cost me $100 to replace, and some sealed transcripts. I wish they said why, but I'm afraid to question them in case they take a closer look at my file and realize they didn't actually mean to admit me). Anyway, the woman taking the passport photos used a digital camera, and showed me the picture afterwards to see if it was okay. I didn't appear to have a double chin or chunks of hair standing on end, so I said something along the lines of "That's fine; it doesn't have to look good." I honestly think she would have reacted less strongly if I had said "That's great; you can't see the oozing sores at all." But anyway, the point I meant to make when I started this paragraph was that my mother, after having spent a good three hours nagging me about having to get this done before I came back, took my photos and promptly lost them the next morning. After tearing through the house for three hours and actually going through all the drifts of mail stacked precariously on the dining room table (in which she found a Netflix movie we had reported lost) she found them stuffed in the book she was reading. This would be the first phase of the nail-biting anxiety I was talking about earlier - we wouldn't have had time to go out and get more, because tomorrow morning I have to go to Newark to get my biometrics data done.
The second part of the nail-biting anxiety came when I said to myself this evening "Well, damn. The school has taken two deposits and isn't going to give them back, my flight is booked, I have a fixed address over there, my government has actually agreed to give the school a whole lot of money to take me, which means that my visa will almost certainly be approved, and consequently it looks as though I'm actually going to get put on a plane in late September and sent over there. Maybe I should take another look at the course requirements." I have to admit, I didn't look too closely at them before I applied. There wasn't any reason to. At the time, I gave myself about a 5% chance of getting into this particular school, and now that they've accepted me and I've gone back and looked at them more closely, I think in retrospect I had well under a 1% chance of getting in (particularly as I never finished my application.) I'm still not convinced there wasn't a catastrophic error in the admissions department; they're British, they might be too polite to tell me. Anyway, I wandered on over to their program website, and then spent the next 15 minutes biting my kneecaps in terror. One of the reasons I assumed I wouldn't get in was that they had written on their front page in letters of fire that I MUST HAVE A RELEVANT UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE. Consequently, they are assuming that I'm going over there with some sort of clue what I'm doing. And besides that, I didn't check their ranking in the field of archaeology, and now I find that it's ridiculously high - high enough that it kind of makes sense to just stay there for my PhD rather than try for Oxford like I was thinking I might do. So now, I'm afraid that I will get kicked out in my first week for complete incompetence. I mean, I'm smart and I work hard, but I simply have no idea what I'm doing. But, if you recall, I predicted this would happen earlier in the summer, so I'm going to tell myself to chill in a stern voice and spend a day or two in the library.
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