snoozy learnin'

modern conveniences update: yesterday, 9:50 am. hour 8 of a predicted 35 solid hours of online continuing education courses for the license renewal. a knock on the back door. "just wanted to let you know we're going to cut off your power. cool?" sigh. er, how soon? "um, now? if that's ok?" i mean, seriously. is it so hard for my landlady to at least give a call the night before? she knows i work from home. and i doubt these guys woke up and randomly decided to come work for free. this is PAST ridiculous. funny thing is, i just got my electric bill, and it's oddly almost 20% higher than the month before. if only i had the time to look up previous bills and compare usage, i could call and vent on some unsuspecting power company employee. oh well. these online courses, by the way... i knew they'd be tedious. i was warned: "f'ing miserable." still, i figured it wouldn't be TOO bad. boy, was i wrong. i truly think they're worse than the on-site courses i took for the pre-licensing reqs. sure, it sucked to wake up early and trek down to school, especially on those lovely summer new york days, but at least then i could read a magazine, doze off, and then go buy shoes or wander through macy's between classes. these online courses are essentially made up of a series of interminable power point presentations, with the fun twist that each page has a timer, and cannot be clicked through until the timer runs down. the average is about 45 seconds, which sounds pretty quick, but that's for one paragraph. maybe i read too fast, but one paragraph takes me about 8 seconds to read... so then i sit here and stare at the timer and wait. if it were minutes instead of seconds, i could easily get other things done, but there's a limited pool of things in life that can be done in intermittent 37 second increments. the good news, i suppose, is that they're not difficult, skill level wise (though the pile of finance questions in the commercial real estate section threw me off a bit). the relative ease hardly makes up for the boredom factor. how many hours should a person really be forced to read about title insurance?? in other education news, i changed my mind about waiting around for two more months for car to be ready. that money is currently en route to me, to be spent instead on paying off my outstanding debts with the dept of ed and the community college, and then taking summer classes. i fear i may regret this decision (passing up the car deal, that is, not the school return), but it's made. C told me tonight that there are 'help wanted' signs all over town up there... plus, he says he could offer me work a couple days a week at his office in the city, doing random scanning and paperwork... sounds good, though if i went for both those ideas, i'd be working even more than if i stayed here, which sort of defeats the purpose of repairing to a country house for the summer, no? not sure why i'm having such a hard time deciding what to do about this. part of it is, if i get a job up there, i won't (theoretically) have the flexibility i have here, to take a weekend off every few weeks without losing my job. not the end of the world by a long shot, but it would require a change of lifestyle. current plan: i'll go up mid may, when the new cafe schedule comes out, and i'll see if there are any jobs left. if i find one, perhaps i'll stay. if not, i'll stay a week, then come back here and work. today roomie said she might be leaving june 1, which will complicate things financially. but as long as i'm working, it doesn't seem to matter what city i'm in. (and that's what makes the decision harder. given little difference between two options, inertia is generally more appealing to us lazy folks. someday perhaps my laziness and my urge to travel will meet on middle ground.)

water, water, everywhere...

oh lookie! it's already time to play my favorite game again: "what modern convenience will i inexplicably wake up without today?" it's raining outside, yet i had to use the brita pitcher to brush my teeth. i was so pissy yesterday at the lack of electricity in the AM that i didn't feel like leaving the house (other than the immediate coffee run), so i never took a shower. who'da thunk i wouldn't be able to take one today. maybe i'll just go stand outside and rinse off. i knew there was a good reason to stay in bed til noon.

jig dancing in the dark

today wasn't off to a very good start... woke up because my bed was pulsing from the downstairs stereo again, to the same damn song over and over, then as soon as i resigned myself to being awake, the power went out. AGAIN. no notice. more importantly, no internet access to finish the work i fell asleep in the middle of last night. and most importantly: NO COFFEE. after a cranky, sheet-faced trek to 7-11, i tried to be productive, figured it was a good excuse to catch up on that pile of NYTs threatening to take over my bedroom, but it was hard to read over the whining of the guys trying to work on the building across the street, who also had no power. (it wasn't the "electrical upgrade" this time-- that's done, for now, tho they haven't cleaned up their considerable mess yet-- i think it was another tree-trimming in the alley exercise. someone must be sneaking through the alley at night with miracle gro.) and then i remembered to try VCU again, in my attempt to get the elusive guy who can answer my question on the phone. it took a while, but i finally did-- and while he apparently never received the paperwork he requested, which i sent nearly two months ago (an important piece of paper went astray on that campus? get out!), i did press him for what the answer would be once he got it. and it was the good answer!! commence with the jig dancing! now, the next hurdle toward that end is to find some advisor-type willing to sit down and help me wade through the zillion credits i have versus the graduation requirements that have changed twice since i first enrolled. and then, of course, to start saving money toward tuition, since i doubt i'll ever be eligible for any financial aid anywhere ever again. actually, no-- before that, i'll finish the AA completely, at that other college i owe $ to. virginia has some nifty rules that'll let me skip some stupid stuff once i transfer, if i have that other piece of paper first. VCU in particular doesn't let you skip as many as others, because they're snobs (?!?), but it'll help with some tedious stuff. i *think* i finished the science before i was forced out, but who knows, with the new reqs... it's the entry-level english classes that i need to be most careful about, ironically. if they try and force me to take that ridiculous eng 200 class after i've already finished an english major, a writing minor, and an american studies minor (each and every class involved had eng 200 as a pre-req), nevermind the AP score that got me out of a similar class at W&M, i will riot. and that'll be yet one more excuse for me not to finish. meanwhile, it turns out that i failed to file my state taxes for 2004, oops, so there's that-- and i know i'll owe, because i owed for federal that year, and state always seems to be higher... so my initial impulse at the above news to send every meager penny i have in my possession right now to JSR toward my debt to them needs to be quelled in favor of being able to write checks to the state for both 2004 and 2005 taxes. i'm guessing it'll be about $150 between the two, and that's after the $90 i just sent to the IRS, and the two nights i had to take off this week when i was sickly. and looming on the horizon, the $200 in continuing education classes must be paid for, which i HAVE to do in the next two months, else i won't be able to renew my real estate license. which means i won't legally be able to get paid by my other job, if indeed anything comes up to be paid for. (optimism reigns on that one, else i wouldn't still be doing it.) and only one more week to decide on my cafe schedule for the summer. i'm torn between wanting to stay here and work my ass off and be ready and able to go back to school without difficulty in the fall, and wanting to go relax in temperate rhinebeck and deal with it all when i get back. some middle ground would be best, and will probably be the reality, but it's hard to envision how that'll work...

a lovely weekend

easter is theoretically a real estate holiday, so i picked up a shift at the cafe friday night. it's usually a lucrative shift, but alas... with all else going on this weekend (easter, the strawberry hill races, etc) it's been a blah weekend. however, if i hadn't worked friday night, i'd still be searching for my Customer of the Month for april... i don't mind waiting on "young" people. when i was in high school, i went out to eat a lot, and my friends and i were usually treated well. i appreciated that, and i try to extend the same courtesy. around 7pm friday, a third of my section was blocked off for a reservation. they were late, so i was cranky, looking out at unused tables that should've been making me money... and when they finally arrived, i wasn't particularly happy to see six young loud folks sitting at the combined tables. when i first approached them, one of the guys was pretending to erase the gorgeous chalkboard art hanging next to the table. that hit a nerve. (the gal who does them is ridiculously talented and well-loved by all of us, and even if she weren't, you don't walk into a place and immediately threaten to destroy the decor therein.) so the first thing out of my mouth at the table was "if you do that, you'll be thrown out of this building soooo fast..." not my best intro. deep breath... six waters. i'm annoyed but not rattled. they ignore me on my next two visits to the table, not showing any signs of ordering anything. on the fourth visit, my patience wearing thin, i ask, "does anyone have any questions i can help you with?" one of the two girls at the table answered excitely. "ooh! i do!" i leaned in, because it was quite loud... and waited. meanwhile, she leaned in to the one other gal, sitting next to her, and whispered something or other. i waited patiently, watching as another six top was seated next to them, and noticing that a duece of my favorite regulars had snuck into my section when i wasn't looking. finally i got their attention again, and asked, "so, what was your question?" and my budding rocket scientist said: "oh, i already asked her." and then she turned to the guy on her other side and kept talking. yes, honey-- my job isn't to bring you dinner (and another bowl of lemons so you can keep making lemonade), it's to moderate your conversation with your friends. naturally, they waited til it was time to leave to ask for separate checks, but i knew that was coming and had them separated from the get go. the rocket scientist balled up a twenty and stuck it in the book, along with a pile of change. some servers hate coins, but i'm not one of them-- it saves me time getting change from the bartender, and cash is *always* better than plastic. in this case, i saw a pile of it, mostly nickels and pennies. i said aloud (back in the kitchen), "i'm just going to assume that's 83 cents there," and started to make bill change for the twenty. another server happened to be standing next to me, and for some reason, she stopped to count the change. "nope, that's sixty nine cents." er, huh? her bill is $8.83. we both counted twice more... sure enough, she'd given me $20.69 for her $8.83 check. it's times like that when it's easy to be snarky-- actually, it's hard not to be-- but i'm pretty good at resisting the urge. i dropped off their change and walked away quickly so as not to overhear any comments her friends made when they saw the change, lest they make fun of her mistake, because i knew i wouldn't be able to keep from laughing with them. and that's just not nice. being nice generally pays off-- they left me just over 20%, none of which was in the form of coins. saturday night, same crappy section, worse night. i switched coffee brands saturday morning, and the new stuff doesn't seem to have the same kick. maybe that's why i had such a bad night... or maybe it was the mysterious shooting pain in my foot that nearly caused me to fall over... or maybe it was that half my section was set aside for a ten top, half of whom showed up 45 minutes late, with two extra people. the on-time 5 ate two baskets of bread (while drinking water and going through two bowls of lemons and quite a bit of sugar and splenda-- more free lemonade) while they waited. they were so loud that when the 12th man finally ordered a beverage, a full hour after the reservation time, i was sure he'd said "milk," yet when i brought it, he claimed he'd said "beer." (nevermind the fact that "beer" is not a complete beverage order. whatever.) it was a fairly uneventful table, other than the theatrical flailing one gal did when her crabcake sandwich arrived. ("i am NOT paying ten dollars for something this small!" no, actually, it's $11, and it's 98% lump crabmeat-- and 98 times more delicious than the well done burger you ordered to replace it. but hey, that means free crabcake for me, so, sweet!) the comic relief came at the end, when the woman who seemed to be in charge mentioned that this was a birthday dinner, and asked what kind of cakes we had. usually i'd bring out the dessert tray, but given the volume level, there was no way they'd hear my descriptions, so instead i brought the print menu and pointed out that the birthday gal was entitled to a free dessert. i gave her a few minutes to read it, and when i returned, she clarified that she was asking about birthday cakes. whole cakes. she was shocked to learn that we don't have a variety of whole cakes lying around getting stale on the off chance that someone might want one. (meanwhile i was envisioning generic "happy birthday and/or anniversary, customer!" messages written in frosting on these imaginary cakes...) but no, what she *really* wanted was an ice cream cake. and then comes the point where it's difficult to control my facial expression lest i reveal that i think folks are completely cuckoo... so i excused myself to get the phone book and supply them with the addresses of nearby baskin robbins stores. at which point i washed my hands of the table, until i finally checked the book, well after they left, to find my 12% tip. frankly, it was more than i expected, so that's the bright side. the not-so-bright side: on an average saturday night, that half of my section would've netted me three times that amount. and tonight, it's easter. brunch is where the real money's at, but i don't do brunch. the cafe will be completely full when i arrive, probably on a wait. for the past week we've been fielding calls every half hour from irate and/or confused people, who can't understand why it's too late to get a noon reservation. "well, we'll settle for 12:30." um, no-- how's 4pm work for you? that's our first available slot. "you don't have anything around 1pm?" well, we've set aside a few tables for walk-ins. "ok, so how long will the wait be at noon?" um... about 4 hours? so for the first hour or so, most of my section will still be full with the day server's tables, so i'll have nothing to do except try to stay out of the way. any new tables will be cranky before they even sit down because they had to wait (and couldn't find anywhere nearby to park). we'll get overflow from the parade when it ends at four, which will add to the chaos. by about eight, we'll be mostly done for the night, and i'll work on my crossword puzzle til 10:30-- assuming the market hasn't sold out of newspapers before i get there. oh, and it's sunday night, so we'll run out of at least one random thing, and no one will notice until a really inconvenient time. lately it's been whipped cream and cloth napkins. my prediction for tonight: mushrooms and tilapia. realistically, it'll probably be something worse, given that we ran out of stir fry sauce last night-- noticed when the 12 top's order included shrimp stir fry, i.e. at the height of the dinner rush. as relatively slow as it's been this weekend, running out of menu ingredients before sunday night is a bad portent. oh, and i haven't finished my taxes yet, so there's that to look forward to. woo! should be fun working on those late tonight, while i'm stifling yawns, since the new neighbors woke me up at 8:30 am... a full four hours before my usual sunday wakeup time. urgh. i suppose the right thing to do now is have an extra cup of coffee and leave for work early so i have time to check more than one store for my NYT. in any case, i need to get out of the apartment rather than sit here trying to figure out how anyone could possibly need to walk around so much at home all freakin day and night-- it's driving me batty. only couch potatoes should be allowed to live above me, dammit. at least when they were still doing construction up there, there was a beginning and end to the noise every day. someone's been walking around that apartment for the last five hours, and the same was happening from the time i got home last night til i went to bed-- i just don't get it. maybe they're agoraphobes, and also exercise freaks? so their only option for exercise is to walk in circles at home all day? or maybe it's some kind of advanced home security system, like a cross between one of those robot vacuums and a noise maker, so it sounds like someone's always home, to thwart burglars. yeah, that's gotta be it.

no sleep til...

yeah, so that theory about being into deep sleep before the band started playing? not so much. note to self: next year, make sure you're out of town or sleeping at someone else's house on the morning of the 10K. yikes. she won't see this, but i'd like to send a yummy vibe out into the universe to PZB: keep on truckin, babe. i've enjoyed reading your journal, and while i admit to having not yet read any of your books (there's one on my nightstand, i just haven't been reading AT ALL lately), i HAVE been sucked into reading some of the viciousness hereabouts, and i feel compelled to say, please do whatever you need to do to cling to your sanity, even if that means pushing loser's faces into the mud. 80% of my NO news has come from you, and without it i'd have little idea what's really happening. if i had any painkillers to send, they'd be yours by now. next: B, call me. i miss you, if that's not painfully obvious. i know you have a life, and i know mine is not particularly lined up with anyone else's, schedule-wise, but i'd love to talk with ya. also, an email address so i don't have to send you msgs via LJ would be cool too. i considered setting up a myspace page to get to you there, but i'd really rather not, unless it's absolutely necessary. if you love me, you won't make me debase myself that way. (haha, just messin with ya.) finally, a stupid thing that's been too much on my mind lately... eh, that'll wait til tomorrow.

soapy

the good news: the weather's beautiful, wish i were here. oh wait-- i am. focus on that. the non-news: i finally finished copying the bajillion CDs, DVDs, and tapes that i have promised to send off to a million people. woo for me. now there's that pesky post office trip. monday, maybe. also, i signed the paper to renew the lease, tho i haven't gotten that in the mail either, and it's due today. some kind of psychological block, i'm sure, but i'm gonna do it. still plotting to spend part of the summer in rhinebeck, but i'm not giving up this apartment until i leave richmond, barring any bizarro-world circumstances. (i.e. i get rich and buy a house-- tho given the market, i doubt i'd do it here.) i could live in rhinebeck full time, year round, for free, but screw the snow. and i'm not "allowed" to leave here permanently w/o a damn degree. (again, barring bizarro world, like i find someone else who can get me into an MFA program w/o it, but this time one w/o the aforementioned snow.) the bad news: mom's been in the hospital all week. in tejas, of course, where i am not. abt 2 weeks ago now, she had a basal cell carcinoma removed, no big deal, they think they got it all, and they gave her antibiotics as per the usual course of things. a weekish later, she got sick-- couldn't do anything but sleep & be, well, sick. she did her usual "no big deal, i'm sure it's just a stomach flu," then finally went to the ER w/o much to show, then went back, to a different hospital. (the folks live *outside* of a town w/less than 2000 people, so their choices, given distance + the f'd up state of retiree/dependent medical care, is slim. i'm no expert, but... my dad served 20+ years, the latter many of which he hated but endured b/c of promises of retirement benefits for him and his family... and still they pay out the nose for health care, and have to ASK PERMISSION to seek emergency care??) 10 hours in the 2nd ER later, someone finally asked the right questions, and it turns out the antibiotic she was given was a broad spectrum one. um... can you say "medical history?" yes, i thought you could, dumbass doc. mom has a compromised immune system from the cancer back yonder... she has no spleen, for allah's sake... so broad spectrum=no good. that killed *everything* bacteria-wise, leaving her body open to random nonsense that most of us confront daily w/o issue. this is not the first time... years ago she got a listeria bug-- common and allowed by the FDA in milk-- and nearly died. ended up w/6 weeks home-ridden, daily nurses, and a machine that pumped drugs into a PICC line every 8 hours, to avoid 6 wks in the hospital-- she HATES hospitals. the specific bacteria this time, i don't know, b/c my dad has yet to get a doc to pronounce it slowly and/or write it down, but suffice it to say, she's got a bad case of colitis. tuesday night, they said that once they IV'd a couple bags of the new (correct, specific) antibiotic into her, she'd turn a corner and feel much better, but that hasn't happened. she's awake more of the day, but still sick. still in the hospital. i want to go see her, feel like i should, but i don't have the grand it would cost me (none of us living near a decent airport), and i'm thinking that if she gets out and needs attention after my dad has to go back to work, well, i should wait til then. dad wondered aloud that her parents haven't offered to come, from within the same state (though *his* mom will be there in a few days, from the same distance, even tho she doesn't drive and can barely walk), and i agree, but i also understand, reluctantly, that at a certain point, certain people will spend time in hospitals, and it won't be that big of a deal, and maybe that's their perspective, too. i just hate that that's true. and there's a part of me that hates that it's so difficult and expensive to go see my folks, even though we aren't super close, and that before last october, i hadn't seen them in three years. i'm a bad daughter, and sadly, i suppose i was trained that way-- by my mom. and i know that doesn't make it right. related soapbox: what the FUCK is up with health insurance? coincidentally, i'd been doing some research myself... a gal at work spurred it, and i'm giving myself a one year + one week deadline, i.e. my 35th bday, to do something about it. (i've been without it since 1998.) she reco'd a high-deductible HSA deal, and that's all well and good (tax breaks are particularly appealing, given that half my earnings are from self-employment), but why, why, WHY is everything in this freakin country focused on bad things happening, instead of on prevention? i say this as a smoker and drinker and driver... i don't expect free/national health care any more than i expect free car/life/renter's insurance, but come on-- how is it that annual checkups and wellness issues aren't covered if i'm paying thousands a year and don't otherwise go to the doctor?? my car insurance went down last week by a significant amount-- $100 every 6 months, which is about 30% of what i pay-- mostly because i've been insured but haven't been in an accident. why doesn't health insurance go down if i get checked up annually and am found to be healthy? how can i get motivated to put out so much money when i go to the doc on average of once every couple years at a cost of about $150 each time? strep in 2004... mono in 2002... acne meds at the free clinic last year, to which i donate whenever i can... if i get lung cancer, well, quite frankly, that'll be my own fault, and i'll expect to pay for it. but i'd rather put $100 aside every month for the rest of my stunted life in a regular savings account, thinking it's for my retirement horse ranch but ending up spending it on hospitals, than give it to some HMO who's not going to then pay for my annual physical or even a pap smear. GRR. having said that-- i've always thought (even as a smoker, drinker, driver) that "sin" taxes should be higher. if i want to smoke, and i'm assumed to get that pesky lung cancer when i'm old enough to get gov't benefits, then fine-- charge me $10 a pack, but then put the $$ in a fund for medicaid/care/whichever. but do the same for big macs, dammit. and if you need to spend eighty gajillion dollars to secure enough oil so that i can drive 8 blocks to work and back to avoid getting mugged on the way home in the dark, that's fine too, but charge me $8 for a tank of gas for the privilege and then use THAT money to pay for the campaign. capitalism is supposed to leave me the option of talking with my wallet. i'll walk to work (and back home in the dark) if i don't want to pay that much, or i'll make a conscious decision to pay it. do i get a discount for taking vitamins and only eating fast food when i take road trips? or for walking around in circles and lifting heavy objects for a living when so many others are sitting behind a desk? doesn't look that way. and while i'm on my prevention soapbox... why do airlines offer bereavement fares, so i can go half-price to a funeral, but not to my mom's hospital room? "eh, she's just sick, send her some flowers." stupid. in three hours there will be a band playing outside my window for 20,000 people who will get up and run 10K on a route that goes by my apartment. i'm guessing most of them, health-oriented as they are, probably have health insurance. my primary goal right now is to be into deep sleep before the band starts playing, so i can get 8 hours before i have to be back at work. what's wrong with this picture??