kaciagemini

I vaguely recall promising an explanation for my absentism lately, so, umm, here it is:
I got bit by a brown recluse (okay, so I'm only... 99% sure it was a brown recluse since I was asleep at the time). On the morning of my birthday.

But hey, at least I didn't realize it until the next day because it only sort of itched and thus it didn't ruin my birthday. My sister bought me a snow cone maker so it would have been pretty hard to mess my day up anyway.

Anyhow, while the spider bite hasn't, like, killed me or anything and is actually finally going away, I had a *major* allergic reaction to it (my face swelled up to like twice normal size and I broke out in hives over most of my body for many days despite copius amounts of benadryl).

So yeah, I didn't much feel like talking to people what with all the thinking I was gonna die or something. (I also kind of have this weird thing where I don't like to tell people I'm sick until I'm on my way to getting better like it will somehow jinx it and I'll die if I let the world know I am unwell. I cannot really explain this.)

So I was in an emotionally fragile state, with all the panicking and such. One which required lots and lots of distraction in the form of mostly reading Panic! orgies. They are comforting to the soul.

But I am almost better and that is a Good Thing. (Even though my thigh where I got bit still itches like mad and people keep yelling at me not to scratch it but it itches.)

And, ummm, I generally apologize for being a crazy person and not telling people stuff. I'll try to work on that.

Also, my birthday present from my girlfriend finally arrived. Fall Out Boy dolls! They are having an orgy on my dining room table right now and it is awesome!

ETA: Because my girlfriend feels it is an important part of the experience, I am also taking a round (double-dose) of Sulfide antibiotics because when I went to the doctor he told me I had to in case it was a Staph infection. Even though it's, ya know, *not* at all. So yeah, pointless drugs.

Strep throat officially sucks. But on the upside, I got to go to the doctor who's known me since before I was born (literally - he did mom's pre-natal care), who I haven't seen in years, which was oddly pleasant.
And, if the flashbacks to childhood weren't strong enough already, he prescribed me liquid amoxycillin because my throat was hurting too much for me to want to think about opting for pills (in fact, I almost opted for the shot). So yes, I'm taking pink bubblegum flavored antibiotics that are one of my strongest, overriding memories from childhood, because I got a damn lot of throat and ear infections when I was little. Stupid tonsils.

In other news, I turn 21 in less than two weeks. Which is awesome. :)

My sister Susan gave me the option of, instead of getting a birthday present, her giving me cash right before I go to Amsterdam... which was obviously my pick. As she owes me approximately a half billion favors for reasons I won't go into now, this is a very good thing. Yay Amsterdam money!

This has been your RL update for the day. Fannish update pending due to the fact that I still haven't watch the finale of Numb3rs. It can't possibly upset me as much as CJ, can it? No, wait, don't tell me, I don't want to know.

Ooh, House finale tonight! I just remembered that and it brightens my day.

ETA: I almost forgot to mention, I won second place at the weekly icon challenge over on jordan_icons.

1 = The one that won.
2 = An alternate version of #1.
3 = The other icon I entered in the challenge.

<td align="center" style="background: #000000; color: #FFFFFF;">Kt's Random Movie Quote:

'Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.'

- Ash, Army of Darkness

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

Evil day of Doom (doom, doom, doom, doom...)

1. Fixed paper and turned in to Eng 300
2. Gave oral report on paper that was amazingly the correct length of time
3. Thought it was a good idea to give said oral report after 4 shots of espresso.
4. Realized the error of my ways. Report was approximately 30% vocalized pauses (Umm....), 60% pure caffeine, & 10% information.
5. Continued to feel like death on legs.
6. Ate soup, the only food type substance of the day.
7. Felt even more like death on legs.
8. Started doing laundry.
9. Watched girlfriend finish Nanowrimo. Yay, girlfriend! Woo! Pretty impressive considering 20K of it was in the last 4 days. (If one missed the memo, I gave up on Nano about 37K words ago...)
10. Decided I wanted to go to walmart.
11. Bought luden's cough drops to stave off imminent death. Yes, I know they don't really help. I don't care.
12. Realized it is now December. Yay-ness.
13. Decided to come back to dorm and die in relative comfort.
14. Remebered laundry is in dryer. Decided to finish typing up lj post anyway.

Let's see, what else did I mean to write about today?

Humorous moment of the day:
A woman came into work this morning to get a new ID because she got married and changed her name. Her new last name? Nipple. Dead serious. If I got married to someone with the last name Nipple, no power on this earth could convince me to legally change my name.

Scary moment of the day:
One of the elevators in our dorm is broken. Normally, I wouldn't care or even notice since I live on the second floor and thus rarely take the elevator, but it was making a horrendous beeping sound, so I happened to glance over at it. Bad idea. The little display that tells you what floor it's on? Definitely said "13". This would be odd in and of itself since most buildings don't call their thirteenth floor 13, but our building only has 10 floors! Crazy elevator. I have surmised that it somehow became trapped in hell. My girlfriendly-type suggested that this was unlikely since it was trapped *up*, but I firmly disagree. The elevator has fallen into a space-time-continuum-shift-wormhole-otherrandomscifisoundingwords-thingie.

Is that all I had to say? There might have been more, but now I don't remember. *sigh* So tired. I really need to go get my laundry.

I think, after getting my laundry, I shall read soothing House/Wilson slash, then go to sleep forever. I have to turn in a short paper in my 9:30 class tomorrow morning, but I've decided I'm going to skip class, write it in the morning and e-mail it to him, solely because he's the only prof I have who actually lets people turn things in through email plus my afternoon class tomorrow got cancelled so I see no reason to get out of bed at all.

*dies*

I would accuse Jen of giving me her cold, but unfortunately the facts argue otherwise. I've had a scratchy throat since *before* she got sick, plus I'm differently sick - she wasn't caughing and randomly hacking up lungs. Rawr. I guess if I can't blame anybody in particular, it must be the weather. Damn weather. *smites weather*

I severely do not want to be at work today. I really, really wanted to crawl back into bed this morning and die for the rest of the day. But, instead, I have to do my homework. (BTW, bibliography cards are the stupidest thing evAr.) This is especially bothersome because so many people *don't* have to work today. Personally, I think that if it's an important enough holiday that the USPS gets the day off, then I should get the day off, too.
*sigh*
Come fix me, Dr. House!

Yesterday was the longest day on the planet. Really.

Here's how yesterday was supposed to go:
-get up at 6 AM
-be moved into the dorm before 8 AM, when everyone in the universe would begin showing up
-work till 4
-buy Home Depot gift card for Beth and Doug as wedding present
-go to wedding
-sleep

Here's how it actually happened:
-Well, first off, I had to move back my start date because I didn't get all my stuff in the car and get showered until almost 2:30 AM, and I didn't want to run a full day with lots of driving on three and a half hours of sleep. Just seemed like a bad idea. So I moved the start time back to 7:30, because I figured 5 hours of sleep would be enough to get by and it still would not be that crowded at about 9 AM.
-So I woke up at 7:30 AM, surprisingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Then I attempted to wake up Bruce. Then I woke him up again. Eventually he got up and took his sweet time getting ready so I didn't actually get out of the house until almost 8:30. He was driving the Jimmy with all my stuff in it and I was driving the Thunderbird so I would have something to come home in after he finished helping me move in and went home.
-We went through Lewisburg to get gas and he decided he needed to check the oil in the Thunderbird because it sounded funny. He spent 10 minutes trying futilely to figure out how to open the hood. He *finally* gave up and asked mom's mechanic who was like 5 feet away watching the entire struggle with amusement. Gomer opened the hood in about 3 seconds. We checked the oil and it did need some, so we fed it a quart. It did run better after that, which was almost enough to make up for the delays he was putting in my plan.
-We finally got on the road towards russellville and ultimately BG. It was almost 9 by this time.
-5 minutes outside of Lewisburg, my cell phone rings. After half-risking my life trying to get my phone out of my purse in the backseat while driving, I answered it. It was mom. Telling me to come *back* to Lewisburg because she needed me to do something for her. *sigh* Turned around and went back to Lewisburg.
-Went by the post office where mom gave me the title for the Kia so that I could take it to a bank in BG and get proof of the lean on it being released (she paid it off with a personal loan on Monday so that the insurance company wouldn't get to keep it - due to some crazy KY-specific laws that don't really make any sense).
-Finally got back on the road towards BG. Going *way* too slowly because Bruce kept falling behind. I seriously had to go like 45-50 the entire fucking way to BG. I think it caused me physical pain to drive under the speed limit.
-When I go to BG, I stopped at the bank where I was supposed to be able to get the lean-realease thingie. After much frustration and waiting almost half an hour, some chick finally told me that she couldn't give it to me because Mom's check hadn't cleared yet (even though they told her Monday it wouldn't take more than 2 days) because it "wasn't exactly local", by which I think the chick actually meant "because it's not a check from *our* bank so we don't feel like doing things in a timely manner". With a side order of "oh, by the way, we don't need the title, we need the receipt from where she paid it off". Lovely.
-Moved on and went to the dorm. The crazy, full-of-people, ripped-apart-by-construction dorm. Because for some reason, they decided that move-in day was a great time to close down the circle around Minton and start ripping up the ground to such an extent that we couldn't even walk around the building the short way. So we had to throw everything out on the ground a ways back behind the dorm, then Bruce had to find somewhere to park the Jimmy while we moved stuff and I had to go find somewhere to leave the Thunderbird all day without getting, like, towed or something. I ended up parking in the new structure, which I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to do, but I didn't particularly care at that point.
-So then I had to hike back around all the crazy construction to get back to my stuff so that I could then carry all my shit a bajillion miles around the back of Minton to get it into the dorm room.
-Tell me why they thought it would be a good idea to rip up all possible paths between Minton and DUC. I mean, seriously, you can't walk the few hundred feet between the two buildings without going halfway around the universe.
-So, by the time I got all my stuff moved in (except for my computer that's still at home with me, and my fridge and stuff that is still at Danny's), sent Bruce home, and headed to work, it was like 11:30.
-Work was kinda rough because there was an OAR and the other two chicks working were there well before me so they got to do the sitting down jobs and I had to run around all afternoon.
-I did go pick up my books from the bookstore when I had a few minutes to spare. I was going to take them back to my dorm room, but I didn't get around to that. I also didn't get a chance to return my Public Health 100 book (because I am probably going to drop that class) and see if my Anthro of Gender book(s) were available yet and pick up a couple of books for Michael.
-Why didn't I get to do those things? Because mom called to yell at me (on danny's phone because mine doesn't get enough service to even *ring* which I got yelled at about, don't ask me how I'm to blame because I have no clue) and tell me that I had to leave right that very second. She needed the license plate for the Kia, which was, for some inexplicalbe reason, sitting in the floorboard of the Thunderbird. She needed it so she could drive the Kia home from the frame shop it was at in Hoptown. She needed to pick up the Kia by 5:30. So I hurried to the Thunderbird, and started driving towards Russelville where she was going to meet me and get the license plate.
-I sped like mad and practiced what I would tell the cop if I got pulled over.
-Made it to Russellville, handed over the license plate, told mom to let me pick up Zoe so that she wouldn't end up getting dragged off to Hoptown with Mom and certainly miss the wedding. It was already time to pick Zoe up by this point and I was still in Russellville. And I couldn't leave yet, because I still had to find a gift certificate for Beth and Doug. I tried 84 Lumber who told me that they don't do gift card thingies which is stupid, might I add. Everyone should do gift cards.
-Said fuck it, gave up and got a Wal-Mart gift card.
-It was like 4:40 by this time and Zoe was supposeed to be picked up at 4:30. Normally, it is a 15-20 minute drive from Russellville to Elkton. When I turned onto the road that goes from Russelville towards Elkton it was 4:45. When I hit the stop light in Elkton it was 4:55. I did some *serious* speeding. Part of that was because I was running so late and part of that was because I happened to be following a truck who was going 75-80 the whole way. Generally speaking, I'm a lot more comfortable speeding if I'm following someone else who is speeding because then that person is more likely to be the one to get the ticket if a cop spots us.
-The craziest part? I *did* see a cop. While I was going upwards of 75 in a 55 zone. He *passed* me. Seriously, flew by me and the truck in front of me like we were standing still. I guess he had more important places to be or something. Hell, I'm not complaining. But I seriously think I had a heart attack when I saw the cop. I had vivid mental images of being hauled off to jail.
-Picked Zoe up, ranted about my day the entire way home.
-Stopped at home so Zoe could change clothes for the wedding, then turned around and got *back* in the car to go up the road for the wedding.
-The wedding was fun and there was good food afterwards. Even though it attacked me. Seriously. I was trying to use the barbecue tongs and I managed to slice my finger open. Don't worry, I didn't bleed on the food.
-Hung around for a while, then went home. Helen came by later and we watched Into the Woods (which is an awesome musical).
-And then I called my girlfriend. It occurred to me about two and a half hours into the conversation that I probably should have had her call me back so that we wouldn't run up Mom's long distance bill. Oops. I hope we have a great long distance plan. I don't think my mom will really complain.
-Then I fell asleep. Like, pretty much as soon as my head hit the pillow. I nearly fell asleep while I was on the phone.

And while today is much less stressful than yesterday, my health (which has been heading south for several days) is worse today. I had a headache when I went to bed and it was even worse when I woke up. I've already taken painkillers which sort of helped. And my sinuses are exploding and have been for several days. My throat feels like it's made of bits of sharp stone and leftover pieces of barbed wire, and I keep sneezing like crazy. I also kind of ache all over. I'm not sure how much of that is from all my exertions yesterday or if it's more a sick-thing.

I'm looking towards probably going to the dorm to stay tomorrow evening. Depending on what time I get there, I will try to hunt down all my friends either that night or sometime Sunday. I miss you guys.

And I have $20 in the bank. Which has to last me for a couple of weeks. *cries*

So, yeah, that's me. How're you guys doing?

I finally got around to creating a personalized mood set. Tell me if you can see it/if you like it... Please!
I'll probably change a bunch of them when I'm not so tired and sick with the third round of the flu in three weeks.

I've been in an incredibly good mood all day and I have no idea why. It's actually really weird, because there's about a thousand reasons why I *shouldn't* be. When I woke up this morning I felt a little under the weather, but I felt better after I was up and around a while. I had a mid-term in my Physical Anthropology class at 9:30 AM this morning. Then in my 11:00 AM class we had a pop quiz. By the time I was going to lunch at ~12:15-ish, it was beginning to rain in earnest, and of course I didn't have an umbrella with me. I almost didn't wear a jacket which would have been very bad as I was wearing a white t-shirt today... Anyways, had lunch at FFC with Jen, then hid out in the bookstore from the rain with her for a while. I bought the Spiderman 2 soundtrack, which sounds pretty good so far. It has a Maroon 5 song I'd never heard before on it, which makes me very happy. After Jen went to class, I went to the library to attempt to look up some articles, which were MIA. I waited around for awhile then gave up on it. I was back at the dorm at about ~2:40-ish, then I took a shower. I checked my livejournal and chilled out for a few minutes, then headed off again. Went to Student Affairs committee for SGA at 4:00 PM, then went to the SGA forum on academics at 5:00 PM. When that was over, we had the actual SGA meeting which got over about ~6:15 PM. Then I went to Academic Affairs committee (also SGA), but I had to leave at about ~6:50-ish in order to make it to Japanese on time. Japanese class made about as much sense as usual (read: none), and we found out that our mid-term is probably going to be next Thursday. I also have a test next Monday and next Tuesday. The only one I'm really worried about is Japanese; I still don't really know my hiragana. After Japanese I went *back* down to DUC for the "No on the Amendment" forum. It was pretty entertaining. A few particularly rabid conservatives actually showed up and Kat did a really good job of rebutting their points without being rude about it. (In case any of those reading this have *no* idea what I'm going on about with the whole Amendment thing - there is going to be a proposed constitutional amendment on the Kentucky ballot this election day which, in addition to defining marriage as one man and one woman, will also ban any kind of civil union or common law marriage even for straight couples. The effects would be far-reaching and drastic.)
Anyway, after we finally made it out of the forum (I'm going to help with the campaign Thursday afternoon, and Saturday morning Jen and I are going to go canvass houses and talk about the amendment. Should be quite interesting.), being as I hadn't managed to hunt down dinner during all of the stuff I'd been doing all evening, I went to RedZone with Jen and Skylar. We sat and ate and talked and stuff, and I didn't end up heading back to the dorm until after 11:00... I've had a very full day. I'm looking forward to the fact that all I have going on tomorrow is work, one class, one committee meeting, and the DebateWatch (I heard it was moved to Diddle - should be fun regardless.). Sad when that seems like a relief. Still, it's like nothing has been able to touch my good mood all day. *happiness* (Wow, that was like - crazy update-ness) I guess I'll go to bed now. Night all!