OMGGGGGG tell me I can't strangle my mother?

So, we're going on a cruise to Bermuda this weekend. (Eeeee!) It's going to be a big family cruise - my parents, my siblings and I, my aunt and uncle, three of their four children (the fourth has a two month old baby, so he can't come), their spouses, and their combined five children.

No one in my family has ever been on a cruise, so this is the first time we're dealing with the guidelines of cruising, such as dinners being business casual with one formal dinner night. The problem is, my mother takes guidelines as rules and she's completely. flipping. out. Some examples:

( Wow, this got long. SO MUCH FLIPPING OUT. )

Marymount transcript lady says that my CLEP test *did* count for three credits worth of government classes, but that I'm still three credits short.

My transcripts clearly show that I've taken the other fifteen credits I need.

I don't want to get too excited yet, but I do believe there is going to be a righteous and furious smackdown before this day is through.

So, I'm starting to think I'm never, ever going to get into teaching.

( Cut for ranting, whining, and abuse of capslock. )

If you watch both SPN and NCIS, run - do not walk - and read Volatile Compounds by eighth_horizon. The story might make sense if you've never seen NCIS, but it won't be nearly as awesome.

*flails and makes more dolphin noises*

So, I spent all weekend cleaning, and succeeded in getting most of my room organized enough for my dad to start messing with the floor. The downside was missing out on a huge chunk of fandomhigh's newbie weekend, which means I still have people who need to meet people, oops.

Interesting finds among the latest mess: at least a dozen more pagan books, six Magnificent Seven zines, a zine of fanfic devoted to the pairing MacGyver/Murdoc (o.O), a flogger (o.O) and a jar of honey. Also, I have now cleaned my entire room and found absolutely no evidence of any living things having come in and died, so my dad can bite me on that front.

Organizing all of my books (they had to be taken off of my bookshelves so the shelves can be moved) reminded me that I have a question to ask of the mighty flist:

Poll #1425816
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

When it comes to organizing your book collection online:

Please help me pick, because they both seem like they serve the exact same function and I can't decide which one is better.

Oh, there's nothing like spending a week getting four hours of sleep a night so you can do all the things you have to do in addition to the cleaning for which you were given little to no warning, only to end up with your father deciding to paint your room a day early because his schedule is the only one that matters, and if what you didn't manage to clean gets paint on it, well, "that's what you get for being a slob."

So, in my effort to continue decluttering my life, I decided to do some personal decluttering.

( Cut for pictures! )

After two program downloads, half an hour of file editing and some technological voodoo, I have finally managed to get my cell phone set up so that if someone from fandomhigh calls me, it'll play "Ever the Same." \o/

The only problem I have with working out on the Wii Fit is that I get the damn game music stuck in my head all day long. *facepalm*

Thank you to everyone who's given me birthday greetings. (Even those of you who reminded me that I'm rapidly approaching old age *cough*Sam*cough*.) I got a shiny new phone (which I was expecting) and a shiny new laptop (which I wasn't expecting), so I feel more than sufficiently spoiled. My dad is also paying for me to get my paralegal certificate over the next few months, as an employment option in case teaching doesn't pan out again. I still hope that I can find a job teaching, so the three years I spent in grad school won't have been a waste, but I'm not going to hold my breath at this rate.

So, today was quite a long, yet interesting day. :)

First, I spent the morning at my High Priestess's house. There's a local filmmaker who made a movie based on her life, and she's been shooting material for podcasts. One of the things she wanted to shoot was Millie leading a ritual, so Millie asked some of us to come out to be her audience/ritual participants. There ended up being three of us, which was a nice number, and I learned how hard it is to be filmed and not look at the camera. *boggles*

Then, I got to drive across town for my annual poking and prodding of the ladyparts. >.< Luckily, everything seems to be in order, so that's it for another year.

Then, I came home and checked on my poor, sick Kindle. I went to read it last night after leaving it uncharged for a while, and found myself face to face with a "Critical Battery" error message that wouldn't go away. I couldn't get it to reset after trying three different Google-found methods, so I called Amazon's help line to see if they knew of a way I hadn't tried yet. Apparently, I tried everything they know of, so not only am I getting a brand new Kindle, but they e-mailed me a pre-paid mailing label to send the dead one back. \o/

And now it's the weekend! Huzzah!

So, I had my first battle with the closet today, and I managed to get about half of it cleaned out. You guys, I know I'm a packrat, but I didn't realize how utterly ridiculous I really am. Over the course of the morning, I found:

- Countless bottles of lotion/body wash/etc. (of varying ages)
- 138 bottles of nail polish (pretty much my life's collection)
- 12 pagan-related books (I put them in there to hide them and forgot they were there)
- 3 notebooks of notes from college (as in undergrad, six years ago)
- 13 pairs of shoes (mostly from high school)
- 3 power plugs for unknown electronic devices
- 3 fannish mix CDs
- allergy medication that expired in 2003
- 6 pairs of jeans with holes in them in places that make then unwearable
- a pair of ceramic bunnies (I have no idea who gave them to me)
- a shoebox stuffed with pictures of James Van Der Beek (oh, my secret shame)
- an unopened Silent Bob action figure
- an unopened Clark Kent action figure (complete with green kryptonite!)
- a stuffed elephant given to me by an ex-boyfriend in 1999 (as thanks for letting him crash with me for a weekend)
- 5 boxes of holiday cards
- a picture of the group I hung out with during my junior year of high school
- a losing lottery ticket
- a picture of my SYA cheerleading squad from 1995
- a handheld game given to me for Christmas 1988 (not a typo, that makes it older than my sister)
- a Linux boot disk
- an unmarked VHS tape (dun dun DUN!)
- a copy of King Richard III that I think I stole from Nikola because it has her handwriting in it, not mine
- a plastic lawn flamingo (I'm not even kidding. I have no idea where it came from.)

And that's not counting the papers and clothes and general non-entertaining junk. By lunchtime, I had four garbage bags filled with stuff. *facepalms* My dad's suggestion of installing a chute that goes from my window to a dumpster in the backyard is starting to sound better and better.

So, I've been given the task of cleaning out my walk-in closet, because my dad wants to rip up the carpet in my room and put down a hardwood floor. (Yes, he's putting wood floors in all the bedrooms. He's a total. nutcase.)

The thing is, for those who have never been to my house, I'm not exactly the neatest person in the world. And by that, I mean that there are boxes of things that went into my closet nine years ago when we moved into this house, and they've never come out. I could have a portal to Narnia back there for all I know. Or a colony of mole people who will try to kill me when I destroy their home. I guess we'll have to see. *wibbles*

In other, completely unrelated news, I don't know if people still need/want Dreamwidth invites, but I still have six of them somehow, so let me know if you want one.

OMFG THERE IS A CREEPY SKITTERING BUG IN MY ROOM CLIMBING THE WALLS WHERE I CAN'T REACH IT AND I SWEAR TO GOD I'VE KILLED IT TWICE ALREADY SO IT'S EITHER IMMORTAL OR IT'S A FAMILY OF SKITTERING BUGS AND THE LAST REMAINING MEMBER IS TAUNTING ME FOR REVENGE AND WAITING FOR ME TO SLEEP SO IT CAN SKITTER DOWN AND KILL ME.

ETA: Victory is mine! Granted, the CRUNCHING NOISE the bug made as I SQUISHED IT will keep me awake for longer than expected, but I still won!

- First and foremost, I want to express my sadness over the passing of minotaurs. I still remember the first time I saw him at Connexions and went "OMG that's the guy who runs the Sex Tips for Writers site!" (I can't believe that site is still there. I can't believe Squidge is still there. Oh, internet history, never change.) It was so amazing to see a guy there among all the fangirls, and then he turned out to be super nice on top of it all and it was like icing on the cake. The last time I saw him was at CON.TXT, where we ended up chatting about Dante's Cove, and it just doesn't seem real that he's gone. So many cons are going to be lessened by the lack of his presence. *sadface*

- It's been both educational and nerve-wracking to watch the uprising in Iran going on. Since I have no television access in my room, I've been primarily following things through Twitter. Watching people RT functioning Iran proxies makes my heart flutter with glee, and I've found myself once again wishing that I had someone around with whom I could watch the news. I went downstairs to grab food for lunch, and all I caught was my mother saying that of course the election was rigged, and if people don't like living in a place where that happens, they should move out of Iran. What what what? Seriously? I don't even know where to start with that! Siiiiigh. I don't know what kind of change will come from these demonstrations, but I hope that some good comes of it, and not just a sea of silencing violence.

This song goes out to all my homies who are keepin' it real in Northern Virginia:



HELP I'M STUCK IN A GIGGLE LOOP AND I CAN'T GET OUT!

Dear chick on Cosmo Radio,

While I agree with you that the whole argument that "men can't be monogamous because they're biologically programmed to sleep with as many women as possible, and therefore it's not their fault when they cheat on their girlfriends" is crap, I'm pretty sure that saying monogamy is a male idea because "The forefathers invented marriage to keep control of their property - that's why it's in the Constitution" means that you've ultimately lost the argument. Thank you for the laugh though, because I kind of needed it today.

Love,
Katie

Okay, so WTF is up with the anonymous comments being left on Big Bang fics this year? I'm not talking about constructive criticism - I'm talking about outright bitchy "This story sucks and therefore the author sucks too" kinds of comments being conspicuously left so that everyone reading the story can see them.

First, there was this comment (not spoilery because it's blatantly incorrect), which was left not as its own comment, but as a reply to the last comment on the first page of comments, so that anyone scrolling down to get to the rest of the comments has to see it. Then today, we've got this comment (spoilery) which is the second comment on the fic's master post, left in reply to the only slightly less insulting first comment.

What the hell? First of all, who leaves comments like that to begin with? And secondly, two comments like that on two big bang fics? That can't be a coincidence, right? Siiiiigh, I don't understand.