Retold

I reclaim my life as my own… almost.  The biggest school project I had this semester is almost done.  I got the tech writing paper written, all 20 pages of it, now I just have to write the secondary pages like the works cited, cover page, table of contents, image listing, etc., and have the paper professionally bound.  Thank goodness there’s a Staples here in town, otherwise I’d be screwed.  Other than that unbelieveably crazy paper, I have a few tests and a paper to write, then I’m done, and there’re only two more school days left. Yay!

On NaNoWriMo, I can’t say I’ve succeded.  I got in over my head and something had to give.  NaNoWriMo had to be it, but I intend to finish the novel in December.  So, this year, December will be NaNoWriMo for me.  Of course, December will be busy too.  I have to start looking for work, stupid job hunting, especially in December, and I have finals, but I’ll have more time than I have this month.  Thank the maker, too, because I don’t think I could take another month like this one any time soon.

Did I tell you that my washing machine died?  My washer just stopped working mid-wash two weeks ago.  So, that means my furnace and my washer are dead.  Thankfully my gal pal, Melanie, showed me mercy and allowed me to use her washing machine.  If not, I’d not have any clean clothes!  Then today, while talking to my mom, she mentioned that it might be the switch.  Guess what, it’s the damn switch.  I stuffed a knife down in the little hole and washer started up again.  Ha!  So, I need to get it fixed but it’s not going to be near as expensive as I had originally believed and I can do the wash in the mean time, I just have to watch to make sure the knife in the switch hole hasn’t wriggled loose.  Not a terribly big deal for the time being.

The furnace, however, I think is wired wrong at the thermostat.  I messed with it the other day and the heater came on but it wouldn’t blow warm air.  Then, I took the thermostat off the wall to check the wiring and when I moved it it turned the furnace on and off without my touching the controls.  I hope it’s wired wrong at the thermostat and not in the wall, what a pain that could be.

Oh and then there was the flat tire.  Yeah, last thursday I went out to go to class and the back passenger tire was completely flat… completely!  Of course, I had a test in 20 minutes and a class that I couldn’t miss after that.  I ended up missing both of them, the test and the unmissable class.  Gah!  I emailed my profs and got it straightened out, made up the test (upon which I made an A-, rather than a B+ thanks to the curve), and made sure I wouldn’t be failed in Brit History for missing more than the allowed number.  All in all, things worked out, even though we had to get a new tire we couldn’t afford.

All in all, it’s been an atrocious month!  I mean, so atrocious.  To top off the wonderful past nearly 30 days, I startled my poor dog awake and he bit me on the face.  It was completely my fault and I felt terrible, even he felt terrible, but he bit me and it hurt.  My lip was bleeding and swollen.  It turned on to be not as bad as it looked at first and when the pain had subsided I felt terrible for startling him and causing him to bite me.  Stupid touchy shih-tzu.  In the end, it wasn’t a big deal, but it was the crown on the awful month!

On the upside, Thursday is thanksgiving and we’re going to be having a ton of awesome food.  Maybe I’ll take some pictures or something!  I love Thanksgiving food!  If I don’t write again before then, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Well, it’s done.  I gave my power point presentation this morning and it sucked.  It looks like I’m going to have to rely on the weight of the paper to carry the load and get me a good grade on the assignment.  The progress report is 15% of my technical writing grade and all he said was that we had to do the power point to get the grade for the progress report.  So, it’s possible that the presentation doesn’t weigh much, but is required to get the paper graded.  I sure the hell hope so because when I got up there and got my power point open, I forgot everything I had intended to say.  I drew a total blank.  Yay for me.  So, I had to wing it.

My presentation came up short on time by nearly half, but I’m consoled by the idea that so have all the others.  Not a single presentation has gone more than 5 minutes and most of them have been more like 3 minutes or so.  Mine was about 4 minutes and it was the most excruciating 4 minutes of my life.  Matt got me a donut to make me feel better.  Now, instead of being happy that it’s over, I’m worried that the fact that it sucked is going to negatively impact my grade.  Gah!  I wish I could just shut off the concern.  Worrying is making my ulcer ache.  I mean, I can’t redo it and I wouldn’t if I could, so worrying is just stupid.

I keep checking my mail, thinking maybe he sent out new grade grids with the progress report’s grade on them.  Nothing yet.  I think he’s waiting until all the presentations are over which means I won’t get my grade for all of this until late Friday at the earliest and next Wednesday at the latest.  Dr. S is usually pretty good about sending the grades promptly, so we’ll see.

Now that the progress report/presentation is over, it’s time to start working on my recommendation report.  I kept telling myself I’d work on it when I got the presentation out of the way.  That would be now and I still don’t want to start it.  Of course, I have to, it’s due on November 26th, which is like 14 days.  14 days is like nothing when we’re talking about technical writing.  I just want to curl up and resist this entire process.  The 20 page paper is going to kill me before it’s over.  Time’s a wasting and I’m dragging ass.  Yeah, I should go work on it.

Ugh, I just want to work on NaNoWriMo… which is not going at all well.  I shouldn’t get started on that topic, I could just go on and on!  I’ll either get caught up or just quit and devote my time to other things.  I hope it’s the first, I really want to finish this year.  Okay, not talking about this… seriously.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

I’m having a bad week.  Previous week, week to come, both of them.  They’ve been/will be bad.  I’m officially behind on NaNoWriMo and like Peyton Manning, I have a lot of trouble catching up when I’m behind.  I’m hoping to work on it today.  I have no idea how I went from 4k words ahead to 3k words behind.  I haven’t worked on my NaNo in days, the story is stuck in a rut and I’m not sure how to fix it. I’m also not sure I have time to fix it.  My life just took a definite turn for the worse.

Yesterday, while washing a shirt for Matt, my washing machine died.  So, his shirt is now floating in a pool of soapy water in the washer and has been since yesterday afternoon.  I’m going to take it out, rince and ring it and put it in the dryer.  I messed with the washer a bit and can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.  It’s just dead.  It’s only 4 years old, but that means it’s out of warranty.  I think the mice that live in the laundry room, the one’s I can’t seem to get rid of, have done something to the damn washer.  This is bad, it means that I now have to take all my laundry to the laundromat.  I usually only do laundry once a month or so, with the exception of the occasional load of delicates, because Matt and I have a lot of clothes.  It’s laundry time.  We have no clean clothes.  Everything we own is dirty, like fifteen loads or something.  It’s going to cost a fortune to take it all the the laundromat.  This is going to sound stupid, but I have no idea where to get that many quarters.  When we lived in Waco, we used to get them in the bank, I think.  Matt always went to get them, he’d come back with rolls of quarters, I never had to do it.  I might just send him to get them again, see what he can do.

On top of that, I have a presentation to give on Wednesday and I don’t know if I can do it.  The assignment is done, I just have to finish the power point for the presentation which just now sits half finished on my drive at school.  I have no clean clothes, that includes dress clothes, which means I am going to have to do my laundry sometime today or tomorrow and I’m going to have to stay at the school late tomorrow because I have to finish the fucking power point.  Ugh!

To make things worse, I need to get groceries.  But, I have no clean clothes or towels.  Have you ever tried showering with no clean towels?  AND, it’s cold in my house in the mornings because the furnace is dead.  Over the summer, the air conditioner was dead, we lived almost a month in the heat without it, and then we called and had someone come fix it.  It turned out to be a fuse.  Now, the heater’s dead and I’m thinking that it’s on a different fuse that also died and wasn’t replaced but I have no idea how to replace it and, like the washer, I can’t afford to get it fixed.  It’s going to be one hell of a cold winter here, both inside and out, lugging the clothes to the fucking laundromat.

I’m also having some personal issues, but nothing I can discuss here.  Not with my health, so don’t worry about that, I’m fine, just other things.  School work is killing me, I’m running out of time to do all the things I need to do before the second week of December.  I have a 20 page tech doc due in less than two weeks and I’ve not even started it yet.  I’m thinking I’ll start working on it when I get this presentation out of the way.

Wish me luck fixing all this shit… I’m probably going to need it.  I’m about to snap… seriously.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

In 1605, frustrated with the new king, James I, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, Roman Catholics hatched a plot to rid themselves of the new king by blowing Parliament sky high with James I inside.  Once the king was dead, he would be replaced on the throne by Princess Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, who would ideally rule as a catholic monarch.  The plot would come to be known as the Gunpowder Plot and was discovered when one of the conspirators sent an anonymous letter to his brother-in-law suggesting he not attend parliament on 5 November. Fawkes, though not the plot’s leader, was found with the barrels of Gunpowder beneath parliament and arrested, bringing the plot to a crashing halt and saving both parliament and king. The only thing the Gunpowder Plot succeeded in doing was angering the King.

Fawkes and his fellow conspirators were to be hanged, drawn and quartered.  Apparently, the convicted would be hanged until nearly dead, then disemboweled and emasculated, the intestines and genitalia burned before the eyes of the convicted, and finally cut into quarters and beheaded.  It was a gruesome death. Fawkes, however, escaped the horrible punishment by leaping from the platform where he was to be hanged, breaking his neck and killing him instantly, saving him from the torturous ending he would have come to.

In modern day, 5 November is Guy Fawkes Day, the celebration of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot and the capture of Guy Fawkes and fellow conspirators.  By way of celebration, the English have fireworks displays, bonfires, and burn images of Guy Fawkes in effigy.  Traditional Guy Fawkes Night foods include toffee apples, baked potatoes wrapped in foil and cooked in the bonfire’s embers, black treacle (molasses) goods such as bonfire toffee and parkin (a molasses cake).  This year, England celebrates the 403rd anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot.

Several traditional rhymes are popular during the festivities:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

This one’s my favorite, it’s a little uncouth but it gets the point across.  It would be fair to note that the following verse, while traditional, has fallen out of favor in recent years because of it’s content.

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A fagot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

Happy Guy Fawkes Night to those who celebrate.  To those who don’t, well, a little culture never hurt!  My favorite class right now is British history since 1603.  You can’t image how pleased I was the day we learned about the Gunpowder Plot!  Modern incarnations of the story appear in “V for Vendetta,” a movie born of a ten-issue comic book series, and “Gunpowder, treason, and plot,” a 2004 television mini-series which aired on the BBC.

For further reading, check out Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn