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Home:Crystal Ball
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Name: Clawed and Shadow
Occupation: Chewtoy.
Current Hobbies:
RPGs!
AIM: MadClawed
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And the silence of the shining stone
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28.0% pyro-pure
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66.6% pure gamer
like the shattering crystal of the poet cries:
"I the enigma undefined,
the error of my age;
the players and the play defamed
that tread a timeless stage.
Ay! both hero and the rake,
of tragedy and of comic parts;
the dirge at many a wake
and the wit that veins the farce."
Oscar Wilde
NnM, I read your blog... I rarely comment, but I read your blog....
*falls over*
Did you ever have one of those....
It all started at 5:00 last night, which was the last time I was actively unconscious. (the brief period of time spent sleeping in biochemistry doesn't count) good dinner, chatted with Icchan until all hours, packed up a bunch of my stuff. Was actually productive. Set the alarm and went to bed. And stared at the ceiling, walls, floor, window, pillow for about five hours or so before giving up completely. re-read an old book, wrote and discarded things on my genetics paper due next week, poked around with the stuff I'd packed, fixed my hair, cleaned up, watched the sunrise, and chatted with Icchan again. I dozed through class, woke up feeling thoroughly ill and decided "I am not going to work in the lab looking like death warmed over with my hands shaking like this" and so trudged back to my room. Detoured thriugh the post office to pick up important documents and browsed through amusing things in the bookstore.
By now I was feeling almost human again and thought "I'll fix lunch (maybe it was a lack of food) and then set out to track down people downtown." Foolish, foolish Clawed should have obeyed the two things her brain told her to do - either to sleep or to go to work.. "Nonsense," said Clawed, "It's one o'clock. I'll run downtown, find out about CPR classes at the fire department, pick up a volunteer application for the crime lab at the police department, run to safeway, and be home in time to relax before heading into worka t three so I'd have enough time before my lab meeting at 5 to finish up another round of DNA extractions."
riiiiight.
First off - I get in my car to discover that I have barely an eighth of a tank. Thrilling. I have 20 bucks in my purse and really can't afford another withdrawl. Fine, ok, I can put 10 bucks in my tank and still have pleanty to pick up milk and soda (aahhhh, the staple of life, Dr. Pepper) After my trip downtown, I thought, navigating upper Flagstaff is hard enough, and it's lunch hour.
I should note, for those of you who have not driven through upper flagstaff, that whoever designed it was on crack. and drunk. and breathing paint fumes. and had been hit in the head a few times. Half the streets run in one direction. All of the streets are barely two cars wide, and all the streets are parrallel parking along the curb only. All streets running north-south turn directly off of a major interstate, Rt 66. The only good thing is that all the streets form actual square blocks - I don't know what we'd do if they didn't.
I placed a phone call to the fire dpt over my lunch and found out my info from them. I had also looked up the street address of Flagstaff PD. I drive past said address, to see a big sign hanging out front saying "law offices of so-and-so." "Perhaps they moved?" my brain said, so I stopped at a nearby bank (wells fargo) in the hopes of finding a phone book.
Not only did said bank not have a phone book, they did not have a phone. Okay, I said, I'll try the address again. Only now I'm on a street that runs the wrong way. looking for a cross street, I spot a building, four blocks from where it's supposed to be, that says "Flagstaff Police Department" Aha! But I'm in the wrong lane.
20 minutes of backtracking later I manage to get in the right lane going in the right direction only to drive past the building as see a sign that says "we've moved" to the address I just tried. Okay, I said. One more trip past "Law offices" no sign of FPD. Looming in my sight is the Chamber of Commerce. Surely they know where Flag PD is! Nope. There were no maps. There was no information desk. The one desk with people at it had a line 20 miles long. Back in the car. This time I stop at "Law offices" Oh, they say, it was here. Now it's on the other side of town.
great. so I figure I'll get gas on my trek across town (an hour and 25 minutes have passed by this point.) So I stop at a little gas station. Now I try very hard not to be a judgemental person. Really I do. But no sooner do I oull into the parking lot than three big, ugly cars pull in as well, stop in the middle of the driveway, and each has the stereo up so loud that my ears are actually hurting as various persons of ethnic diversity flood into the convenience store and proceed to hold long, noise conversations with the clerk behind the counter, who is far more interested in the phrase "No Shit" than in my 10 bucks. I am never stopping there again.
So I finally track down the police department, and I can't help but wonder, who in this city knows what's going on? How does one seemingly misplace the police department? But, I thought, my search is done, and I can get my information and go to work, although at this point in time I won't be done until 7. Alas - foiled again. The only part of the whole thing I can access is records. But, I figure, they have to at least know where to send me next. It took the woman behind the counter 20 minutes to track down the street address of the crime lab.
and I want to work for these people.
I walk out to my car, wondering if it's feasable to get any work at all done tonght, and glance at the address to discover I have no clue where in hell the street this lab is on is. frustrated, muttering, startling other people around me, I get in my car and begin the laborious task of crossing two city blocks to get back on campus. Yes, I would have had to have gone two whole blocks.
Go to park in front of the biochemistry building in the hope of getting some work done, to remember that I can't park in any north campus parking lots until after 4:30. This campus - they actually design their parking lots so students will be reluctant to bring a vehicle. Then they sell more permits than they have spaces - on the order of about twice as many. Then they restrict you to tiny little cross-sections to put your car on. But, fortunately, there's a metered lot right across the street from the lab. I pull into the lot, gape at the fire truck with a big ladder up and people climbing off the roof of the chemistry building. I miss all the good stuff. Dig out my change purse - I have one dime and fifty-two pennies. that would buy me 8 minutes. Okay, so much for work. I'll go to safeway, and do my work in the morning.
Safeway turned out to be a game of "hunt down the parking space" and "dodge the little old people who insist on walking side by side at a snails pace exaclty in the middle of the aisle. Again, I try very hard not to be judgemental, but today...
get home. get phone messages from people who leave no phone number to call back. Dash off for lab meeting, afraid I'd be late, all the way up to north campus, up to the second floor - to remember that she cancelled lab meeting this week because 3/4 of the lab won't be there.
Tired, cold, windblown, I head back through the building, concentrating on one thing - the soda machine in the english building that has Dr. Pepper. Dig out my change purse - 1 dime, 52 pennies - and, gloriously, a dollar bill.
And in a final act of vengance, it ate my only dollar bill.
*turns into the Game Master*
Kallaris - since you're going to be home, or completely unavailable at boot camp or whateveryoucallit, all summer, and I'll be working 40 hrs a week, I think it's best if we sit down sometime before finals and hammer out a few things regarding rules for us if we want to run this thing next semester with both of us. And don't say to me "we've got plenty of time." We don't, and I know you well enough to know that you are going to be very stubborn about certain things. We don't want to be arguing about things later down the line, and we're going to need this summer just to set up what we're going to do. To be perfectly blunt, speaking as one game master to another, you have a tendancy to be very ... unmovable... on more than one thing that is going to cause major issues with the way I GM and we need to pound out rules, not for our players, but for ourselves right now, so we know how to build our world. (and, forgive this comment, but note the word our in this context.)
*turns back into herself*
Sorry about that, but I always forget to bring this up when I've got you sitting in front of me... that or you always take off someplace... Perhaps this will remind me to have this discussion with you sometime ^.^
Not that anyone cares, but here's a piece of fiction that I wrote a long time ago... posted for Icchan but anyone's welcome to look at it. It's not pleasant, but it's not supposed to be.
Unchained
Gods - the one night I need sleep and it won't come. Waaaay too many things to stress out over - major paper due in genetics, that I'm only half-done on, have to fit in CPR classes because I need the extra credit for a class that ended two months ago, I have to contact Flagstaff PD and get a volunteer application for this summer, and tonight I find out that one boss cannot sign me up for summer housing because I haven't put in enough hours there, and the other has no clue what I'm talking about. I hate this campus sometimes. It wouldn't be much of a problem, except that if I can't get employee housing I have to take a course, and that means summer tuition. Which I don't have the money for, literally. I am worth, at this moment, exactly 112.35$. Comforting thought. And on top of all of that, I have finals in less than four weeks. Thrill of thrills. My friends are planning this event and that event and I have to wonder if any of them are actually taking classes or if it's all one big hallucination.
This morning I was sooo optimistic... class went well, work went well... things were looking good... but I have to go home this weekend for personal things that I really don't have the time for, I have to try and straighten out the jobs I'll be working and how in the hell I'm going to pay for all of this, and on top of all that I have to keep up with my classes, which is a full-time job in and of itself.
it just seems that there are all these things that I am supposed to be able to do, but no one ever taught me how to do them. It's like it's something I'm supposed to automatically know the minute I enter college. there are times when I wish I could erase the last three years of my life and start over now that I've made my mistakes and know what I'm doing. Everyone expected perfection out of me, because that's what they got in high school where everything was easy. Even my parents, who I know try not to, do Not understand why I'm getting lower grades in class and running out of money because half the time I can barely work enough hours to keep myself afloat. I can't go to them for moral support, because Mom will simply rant about how I need to work harder and Dad will rant that the system is supposed to treat me like a goddess, and I can't go to them for money, because they don't have it to give to me. I barely made it three years and already I've hit what feels like rock bottom.
I mean, who set up this system, anyway? Dump us out of high school and we're magically supposed to be able to fend for ourselves. There are those of us whose parents can't support us, who don't already have high-paying jobs (at least for a student) and *shock of shocks* aren't perfect.
I was always told that I seemed older, more mature than everyone else my age. Three years ago I thought I was as much an adult as I was ever going to get. God, i didn't know how much childhood I had left to lose.
And now I'm faced with too much to do, not enough time, not nearly enough money, people who don't really care or can't see past the end of their nose, and I'm so drugged out of my brain on sleep medication that I don't think I make sense even to me.
I just can't help but wonder, what's the point of all of this if all I'm going to do is fail anyway?