How much longer?...

WHEEWW... this first week of college wore my ass OUT! By Friday I was exhausted. Part of it may be mental exhaustion from the stress of the first week, but the other part is physical exhaustion. Back when I worked as a hotwalker at the track, hauling around 1000lb race horses all morning long was easier than what I'm doing now, hauling around 30lbs of books, art supplies, portfolio, etc, back and forth across the campus. Next week I'm going to try using a rolling carryon suitcase and see how that works out.

It would have been nice to leave my stuff in the car and only take what I need for each class, going back to the car in between classes, but that would take more time and effort than it's worth. The $180 that I paid for "Premium" parking gets me into a lot about 3 city blocks away from my classes. It's when I'm walking to my car that I think that maybe living on campus wouldn't be such a bad idea, lol.

Other notes:

• Why doesn't the Art building have automatic doors? Art students are constantly lugging huge portfolios in and out of the standard push/pull doors, along with boxes of supplies. Heck, even TCC had automatic doors on ALL buildings! Sure made life easier.
  
  
• I wish I had been warned about filling up my schedule with a bunch of lab classes. When I told my friend Erika that I'm taking Chemistry she about flipped with a doomsday prophesy, saying "oh you shouldn't have taken Chemistry with a full schedule!!!" As it turns out my Chemistry class doesn't look too bad, Prof is very entertaining and doesn't seem difficult, makes the labs sound easy as well (I'll let you know after the labs start!) What WILL be difficult is the other labs, Design and Drawing. Mucho homework so far.
  
  
• I'm learning about Teaching Assistants for the first time with my lab classes. One of my TAs is extremely annoying and condescending, and a dingbat on top of that. Unfortunately I don't have much faith in her as an instructor, but I'm stuck with her.
  
  
• The Beverage class that Hubby and I are taking together promises to be fun. Professor is very entertaining and comical, and says we'll have 4-6 tastings for each class. This week will be our first tasting, starting with vodka and gin. Good thing it's our last class of the day!
  
  
• Each day at school is hurry-up-and-wait. Many of my classes have at least an hour break in between... which is just long enough to walk to my next class and sit and munch on a snack... but not long enough to do anything else like go to the computer lab or library or bookstore, etc. Not without being in a rush anyway, and I don't like to rush. So, I use the time to read my textbook chapter for that next class.

That's it for now... I have a wire sculpture model that I have to do for Design class as homework. Then perspective drawings to do for Drawing class. Then..........

Word of the Day...

From the Keller City Limits blog:

Bleg; To bleg is to write a blog entry or comment for the sole purpose of asking for something.

In other words, to beg on a blog. It just struck me as funny, another new bohemian word created from technology.

And no, I have nothing to bleg for myself, other than advance notice of this week's winning Mega-Millions lottery numbers.

School notes...

School starts tomorrow, at the university. I'm looking forward to it. Although, I'm not looking forward to starting off first thing Monday mornings with Chemistry. Yuck. Hopefully I can bring my coffee to class.

Buying textbooks was an adventure last Thursday. I wound up standing in line 4 times for the cashier:

First time I got to the cashier and told her I needed a parking permit, she said I had to go to a computer and register for it first, but she could hold my books at her counter...

so after getting the parking registration I stood in line again only to find out my books had disappeared, one of the other employees had put them back on the shelves...

so I went and gathered up my books a second time and stood in line a third time, only to have a problem with my stupid bankcard and had to leave to find a Chase atm...

and finally stood and waited one last time to actually pay for my stuff. Argh.

Naturally Hubby had to call and ask what was taking so long, had I gotten lost or something? Wrong thing to ask at the wrong time, I think I gave him an earful of aggrevation.

Oh well, things will be a pain sometimes, just a part of being in school. A lesson in patience maybe? I guess I failed that course Thursday...

A Day in the Life...

Having a person in the home with dementia makes for an interesting day. At times it's even comical. I don't mean to offend anyone by making light of a serious disease, but Hubby and I both agreed that we need to keep our senses of humor when dealing with his mom. So, here's a sample of one day, yesterday:

Mom-in-law (Merle) from what I hear was once quite a cook, and she often asks if there's anything she can do to help in the kitchen, although with her vision problem there's not a lot she can do. But, Hubby asked her if she could attempt to make her cold Green Bean Salad. Nothing to cook, just toss the ingredients together, mix, and chill, easy enough. So first thing Hubby did was ask, "Do you remember what goes in it?"

Merle: "I think so... green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper..."

Hubby: "Seems like there's something else... like paprika?"

"No, I never put paprika in it... green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper..."

A thirty minute conversation ensues about the ingredients. Still the same list is repeated.

So Merle and I go to the grocery store. She pushes the cart, I walk in front the whole time guiding it away from running over small children.

One of the first items we pick up is a carton of eggs. (Yes, I know you should get your cold things last, but as slow as we were walking I had no intentions of zig-zagging across the store. The eggs could survive until we got home to the fridge.)

Then in the produce section "We need to get eggs."

Me: "We already got the eggs."

Then on the aisle with the salad dressing "Green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper... OH, we need to get eggs!"

"We already got the eggs."

Then in the meat department "Do you have eggs at home?"

"We already got the eggs."

After getting the rest of our groceries, and establishing another 4 times that we had indeed picked up the eggs, we checked out and went home. Then came the time to make dinner.

"Are you sure you remember how to make your salad?"

"I think so... green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper... paprika..."

Another twenty minute conversation about the ingredients.

So Merle starts making her salad, carefully putting each ingredient in the bowl. Then she turns to me and asks

"So where are the bacon bits?"

"BACON BITS?!? You never once mentioned bacon bits!"

"Oh. Well we need bacon bits."

Luckily we had a package of bacon in the fridge. A few pieces were nuked and crumbled and saved the day.

So anyway, these little tidbits have been comical for us. Hubby and I know things are going to get worse over time, but we're trying to see the humor and not dwell on the negative of it.

Go USA...

Here I am at 2:30am, watching Olympic gymnastics.

It brings back memories- of a night in 1984, sitting out in the hot tub with my parents, we brought a TV outside to watch Mary Lou Retton perform her perfect 10s. Ah, those were the days.

Now sitting here watching these little girls bouncing 15 feet in the air just off their feet, it reminds me that I'd probably fall on my head doing a simple cartwheel. Why are these girls not affected by the laws of gravity like I am???

On another note, I went to the Olympic website to check the schedule and saw that you can "watch events live" on the Internet. So I thought, cool, I'll check out what's going on in the Equestrian arena.

Following the link to watch the live webcast, I was then told I had to install the plug-in "Microsoft SilverLight." This is where I start to bitch. It irritates the bejesus out of me that every time you turn around you have download something else, run another active-x control, and install a friggin plug-in. And Microsoft of course jumps on the opportunity of using the Olympics to promote the downloading of their software. Then the damn thing didn't even work. Grrr. So much for watching "live."

Okay, end of rant. GO USA.

Odds & ends...

... Mom is out of the hospital but has a doctor's appointment in a couple days. They have her on a cocktail of different medications which she is trying to get used to. But she's just happy to be home again.

... Hubby and his Mom will be going to Oklahoma for the weekend, so I'll be enjoying some quiet time for myself. Which means I'll be sitting my ass on the computer all weekend.

... I've got an A so far in my Algebra class, but it doesn't really matter since it doesn't transfer to UNT. I'll have to take the Accuplacer entrance exam and take College Algebra at the university. But, I'm staying in my current class just so that I will do better on the Accuplacer.

... If you've visited my artwork website this last week you'll have seen that I'm giving it a makeover. I never liked how it was put together the first time, but I was in a hurry when I made the first layout using a template. This time I'm trying to make it look a little more professional and doing the website layout from scratch. It'll probably change more than once before I'm happy with it (you mean a female changing her mind over and over?? Say it ain't so!) Anyway, it's in a state of (re)construction right now, so expect a lot of non-working tag attributes and "page not founds."

... UNT sent out information on a new art & design scholarship for new and transferring students. Cool. I've been working on putting together the application packet for about a week now, and I'll be driving it up to the campus today to submit it. Wish me luck!

... One last note, most of the garden has bit the green ghost. My last garden succumbed to squash vine borers, but this year since it was so dry I had an attack of red spider mites. They pretty much ravaged the whole garden, sucking the life out of every green leaf... all except the jalapeno and bell pepper plants! But everything else is toast. We are considering this year's garden a success however, because as Hubby noted we did harvest at least ONE fruit or vegetable of every variety planted, lol. Plus, we have a freezer full of tomato, zucchini, green beans and jalapenos. Overall my carrots and radishes came out decent, and I had one watermelon. I learned that I need to plant my watermelon vines earlier next time. Another unusual thing about them, my "seedless" watermelon had normal big black seeds... what's up with that?!? And then alas my poor pumpkins, unfortunately I don't think they will keep (without rotting) in storage for 3 months until halloween!

Funnies...

For a little humor, here's a modern remake of Calvin & Hobbes I found on the Net called Calvin & Steve Jobs.