Tag: News

Enter our hero (shocked and slightly embarrassed at the sight of Larry in a towel). I finished my magnum opus in a matter of eight days, proving that man is still better than machine, then I lay down my hammer and died. That was Wednesday. Then, looking up, I realized I had only two days before my parents showed up for my graduation. (Good thing I checked with the registrar to make sure I was actually graduating—I’d to have to re-take that class taught by Satan.) The trouble is, when I get stressed, my place gets trashed. For me, picking up after yourself is a function of a peaceful mind. A man on the edge of a breakdown doesn’t have time to do laundry. I called in my trusty friend and for two days straight we cleaned (this is incontrovertible proof that she loves me). I was lucky: after only 24 hours of digging, we hit carpet. By Thursday night, everything was finished except scrubbing the bathtub and the tile in the bathroom (it still need some scrubbing, if anybody wants to volunteer). Valerie went home around 10, and I stayed up to wait for mi parientes.

It’s officially a 16 hour drive from Tulsa to Charlotte, 17 with the time change. They had their own minor catastrophes on their end which had them leaving Tulsa at around 8 am instead of my mom’s preferred 5:00. (If anyone ever managed to live according to my mom’s planning, they would have conquered the world by the age of 24, all while managing to be healthy, well-rounded, and a parent—proving that Alexander the Great was nothing more than a sissy.) This meant that they should have gotten in sometime between two and three. A painful trip, but worse things have happened. Around 12 or 1 I went to bed and set an alarm for 2:00. I got up at 2 and called my mom’s cell. They were on Interstate 26 heading toward Asheville (away from Charlotte!). Apparently, lovely Mapquest had told them to go from I-26 to I-85. The actual preferred route from Asheville to Charlotte is to take I-26 to US 74 to I-85. I-26 meets I-85 in South Carolina, adding another 20-50 miles to the trip if you go that way. My parents knew they weren’t supposed to go to SC, so when they hit the border, they turned around. I gave them the proper directions and went back to bed, resetting my alarm for 4:00 in the morning. At 4:00 I called again. This time they were on I-85, having driven all the way through to the other side of town. Apparently sleep deprivation can do bad things to your ability to recognize your exit. I gave them new directions and decided to just stay up and wait for them. I was also informed that cell phones were dying. Somehow the car battery adapter got put in the wrong car. At 4:30 I called again. My dad’s phone was already gone. My mom’s phone said it should be. But they were finally on the right road to my apartment. They were also so tired that they were inadvertently driving at about 20 miles an hour. It was exactly 5:00 when they pulled into my parking lot. They were on the road for 20 hours. I love my parents.

Needless to say, they were out for a while. For me though: Graduation rehearsal, Baccalaureate, picking up sister from the airport (a job done by my lovely assistant)… I had fun trying to explain to some , whose parents weren’t religious enough to attend Baccalaureate, how there was no way that a service at a moderately liberal Christian university could possibly be “spiritually significant” enough to my zealous parents. True to form, we had the exact discussion afterward that I was anticipating. Let’s just say that a service that can be applicable to all faiths is pretty much useless to any particular set of beliefs. Ironically, that evening we went to MorningStar for their standard Friday night service, where we all promptly fell asleep. We left in embarrassment after the music. They were about to get downright Pentecostal on us and we figured it would make them feel bad if even a shouting service lulled us to sleep. Sometime during the MorningStar service, my cousin and her parents showed up from Virginia, and they came over after we came home and stayed and talked with us until I kicked them out around midnight.

That was Friday. Then Saturday: Graduation, lunch with Yujiro’s (my former roommate’s) family, help Valerie move, and then came the cool stuff.

We have a slight genetic disorder in our family. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of. I call it a compulsive giving disorder. It’s bad. Really bad. For years now, the Christmas presents have never managed to fit under one tree. We won’t discuss birthdays. My mother has it, and her mother before her. My sister and I (very carefully) are trying to balance this against my dad’s side of the family, which has a compulsive saving disorder. Between the two sets, Ces and I hope to come up normal, well-rounded people. But you never know.

My family isn’t particularly well off by any standard (except for Yujiro’s, since he measures wealth in square footage. Japanese families typically live in 2 bedroom apartments). Nevertheless, for a combination of graduating, and my birthday coming up in a month or so, I was given a “new” car, a new bed, and an aquarium (which would be from my sister).

I was pretty blown away by all this.

Basically, my dad has a bunch of cars (like five or six) all sitting in his driveway that all work about 80%. They rotate. They get one fixed just in time for the next one to break. So my dad decides to give me a car. He picks the Ford Taurus station wagon, which needs a new transmission. He doesn’t have the money for a new transmission, which is why the car has been sitting there for a while. My dad calls up his dad, who gives him money to help with the transmission. They fix up the Taurus, and then my dad’s mechanic friend decides that they need to re-do all their work before it’s done right. So, the day before they leave, I get the Honda Accord that’s been working for a month or so now. (see how this rotation thing works?) This has several advantages for me: first, the Accord has a CD player in it. The Taurus has a CB radio. Don’t ask. Secondly, I just like accords, no matter what auction they were bought at.

Then for the bed. My parents had $200 in budget to come and find me a magical bed that only costs $200. I’ve spent months looking in ads and places, finding most complete bed sets in the minimum range of $400—500. This I want to see. Saturday afternoon, after further playing with the car and generally making me nervous, we went out to look for beds. We found ads in the newspaper (miraculously) that spoke of complete queen sets for only $169. We also found (not so miraculously) that nobody responded to our calls at the listed number. We also found several furniture stores that sold unpleasant looking beds for more than we could afford. And then we found one only moderately store that had banners proclaiming complete bedroom sets for only $260. We also found that most of Charlotte has not yet caught up with the idea that they live in the largest urban area between Atlanta and Washington DC, so they close at 6:00 on the week end. It was after 6 and shopping was over.

Sunday, directly after church we went to this store again, and discovered that, while they did have bedroom sets that sold for $160, the ones where you couldn’t feel the bedsprings cost between 2-3 times that much. They had $200. I had a check from my mom’s parents for the difference. We thought, maybe we’ll check the classifieds one more time.

And there it was. Sealy posturpedic mattress and box frame with maple frame. Originally bought for $1300. Now selling used for a mere $300. Free delivery. I called the lady up, she answered the phone, I agreed to come look at the bed at 7:30.

My parents wrote me a check for $200, told me to buy a nice bed, and left Sunday afternoon around 3:00. We are all very glad that they stopped over night in Tennessee on the way back. I am almost finished resting up from my parents visit.

Of course, I have more to relate, about my sister’s visit, and further foibles with the car, but I’m almost to the three page mark in MS Word. I’ll be shutting up now.

KB

Wow. I’m still not sure it’s over (can’t believe it’s really over).

I’ve graduated. No more school. No more assignments. No more homework. No more impending sense of doom. Well, the doom hasn’t left yet, but I suppose that’ll fade with time. Before I went back to school, I kept having these recurring nightmares. You know, the typical “public place with no clothes on” type scenario. Except with these, it was me, the last few days of school discovering “oh yeah, there’s a class you’ve been signed up for all semester that you forgot about. Now you need to take this final exam or never graduate.” Have that dream about three nights in a row and it’s going to get really kooky. Now that it’s all over, I’m having a similar problem. I keep dreaming that there’s some major assignment that I’ve missed and they’re going to take back my diploma.

This really stinks. Technically, the diploma is no big deal to me. I didn’t get palpitations of the heart when we got in line. I didn’t think “now I’m really something.” Because I got a piece of paper. But they made me really work for that thing, and for some reason, when it comes to education, it’s embarrassing to say I had to work. It felt like work, but I know so many other people who actually work for their grades. Work for them looks like a piece of well-oiled machinery. Work for me just means I managed to make myself sit down and put out content. I can’t help feeling that, next to some people, my work ethic is just a bit flighty. Nevertheless, what was intended not to be work has turned out to be a great labor. I’m so glad it’s over.

Let me see if I can give a quick synopsis of recent events and where I stand today: Everything was backed up all semester. First, I had an incredibly awful semester last fall. It was so bad that I had two (count ‘em, two) papers that I didn’t turn in until about mid-to-late February. Basically my “ethics” class kicked my butt, and I worked on it so hard that I ignored the classes that I knew I could handle relatively easily. (It had to do with differing with the faculty on what issues were actually ethical dilemmas.) I got done with the semester and spent the entire Christmas break staring at a computer screen not actually doing any writing. I got both English papers about 98% done and decided to finish them up the first week back at school.

Enter “The Problems…”

I’m sure I’ve related all this stuff before. Nevertheless, for the sake of context (and a really really long blog), I’m going to rehash most of it: Instead of flying back as my ticked designated, my parents decided to drive me back, because I was going to be moving into an apartment approximately three months ahead of schedule. Blame that on a bad economy and a few choice words my mother would like to have with the governor of the state of North Carolina. The NC budget went bad, so they went out cutting corners, and they came up with a really nifty loophole: they decided that college campuses are no longer actually part of the state. I had been receiving about $5000 per semester in state grants, which required me to be an in-state resident. No problem. I’ve been living here for six years. But the North Carolina budget boys decided that “on campus” cannot count as a permanent address. It’s just a temporary address. So, if you are living on campus, obviously your real address is where your parents live. For me that would be Oklahoma. I had no idea I lived in Oklahoma. My driver’s license says NC. So do all my taxes. But as far as North Carolina is concerned, I live in Oklahoma. I’m pretty sure the great state of Oklahoma would be willing to debate that, since they won’t give me any grant money to go to school in NC either. So apparently I’m living in limbo land.

It’s nice here in limbo land. Temperature’s always a pleasant 72 degrees… No place to sleep though. Or to put your books. My solution was to move off campus and cut all my classes to the bare 9 hours I had left to graduate. Suddenly I’m a part time student, reducing my cost by… $5000. What a coincidence. Suddenly I also have no furniture, no food, and no car. So we drove up and brought all my old stuff and threw it in the apartment. It was hectic. Anything that involves both parents driving over 1000 miles and staying just for the weekend is always hectic.

So, I spent all my spare time last semester acquiring things like lamps and a desk and a dresser and all that stuff, and walking three miles to school (up-hill both ways…)

Anyway, all of this would have been fine. Two out of three classes this semester were not only a breeze, they were really kind of fun. I loved my literary theory class. Wish I could have taken it before all my other lit classes. But this one class was coo-coo. I won’t go into details because this is too long a blog in the first place, but he kept insulting the students, he graded more on grammar than on content, and he was terrible about communicating the proper criteria for getting a good grade in the class. It put me in the exact same position as the previous semester of focusing all my energy on the crappy class and ignoring the ones I liked. I was seriously in danger of getting a D in that class—a failing grade when it’s part of your major.

I had no final exams this semester (amazingly), So I spent the entire last week of school locked in my apartment working on a single 12 page paper. I turned it in exactly 8 days late. Fortunately, that professor had heard about problems with the other guy and said he wouldn’t take off for being late.

OK. I’m going to stop here. I”ve got more to say, but I’ll say it separately. Graduation was a whirlwind, to say the least…

KB

Well, you didn’t think I could keep it up forever, did you? I had to stop sometime.

Actually, the supply of things to publish has not slackened. But my time has. Things are bad now. Really bad. How bad are they? Pretty darn.

Let’s see, I’ve got about four papers that are more or less late. That’s the biggest thing, really. Homework overload freaks me out, and then I procrastinate. I juggle very poorly.

The other thing is less traumatizing (for me at least), though by far it is more important. The state of North Carolina had decided that I am no longer a resident of NC. This means that I have lost about $4000 in grants from the state. As if this weren’t bad enough, the school, assuming that I would get the same grants I’ve gotten every year, went ahead and credited my account and gave me a $500 refund. I’ve literally had the carpet yanked from under me as I suddenly owe around $2000. If I don’t find alternative sources of funding, I get to get a job next semester, move off campus and go to school part time. Yippy Skippy! And yet this is somehow less bothersome to me than 4 overdue papers.
I think it’s because it’s easy to prioritize my financial problems, and break them down in to steps to viable solutions. I considered getting a bank loan to make up the difference, on the grounds that with an extra semester to look for a job, I’d have a better chance of finding a job. Unfortunately, it seems that they got this here recession on, and the chance of getting a better job in three months doesn’t seem to be any better than getting a “good” job now. It appears that I’m best off to save me the cost of the loan. My other solution involves politics. My advisor (in her indignation) wants me to take this to the president. She thinks that the school owes it to me to make up the difference. I don’t know anything about who owes whom, but I am more than open to other sources of funding. J So I went to the president. The president’s secretary sent me to the dean of the college before I could talk to the president. The dean sent me to the head of admissions. The lady who was the head of admissions left me with a voice mail saying that the school would not allow me to get funding as a NC resident because my “permanent address” is at the college. Tell me something I don’t know. Thus ends the first loop of the runaround. I figure by the third loop, I’ll know whether I have any chance of getting anywhere.

It’s the weirdest thing, though. I’m miserable so far as my classes are concerned. But my finances… happy as a lark. I know that it’s completely outside my responsibility and that I haven’t done anything I shouldn’t have. I’m in a place of absolute helplessness before God. This is a good thing. I know I can finally expect a miracle when I finally need one. The day I found out about my troubles, I was happy as a lark, laughing and ing jokes. I don’t think it was one of those “stress induced” thingies either. I’m upset about my classes, and happy about my finances. What’s the problem? I know I’ve been slacking in my classes and have done everything I could for my finances. No shame—no pain.

However. This here’s Thanksgiving break. Regardless of our classes or our finances, they kick us out for Thanksgiving. I’m going with Constance (and all her sisters and her cousins and her aunts) to visit family in the DC-Maryland area. I’m not taking my computer with me. Homework, yes. Computer, no. You know what this means. I suppose it might be possible for me to borrow somebody’s internet access for long enough to post something over the break. It’s also possible that I may pick up a lotto card while I’m getting gas and win the state lotto and resolve all my financial difficulties. But since I’m not a big fan of the lottery, I really wouldn’t be expecting to read too much of mine. And after I’d done so much to get my readership up…

Check out the archives and nibble on your fingernails until I get back. You’ll hear from me first thin, Monday morning, next week.

Kudos, and happy Thanksgiving!
KB

Interesting tidbits from my wonderful, fascinating life, all of which will probably interfere with the aura just inspired by the above poem:

Folks, life is getting scary. I found out Monday that I had a bibliography assignment due, um… last week. It was on the syllabus, plain and simple, but it wasn’t in the actual schedule of when things were due. You had a couple of pages of reading assignments, and on the back was the instructions about the paper that was due. I didn’t read those instructions because I wasn’t prepared to write my paper yet. However, in this particular class, my paper is broken down for me into several assignments, one of which was due last week. I think he talked about it in class, but I’m really not an audio learner, so I didn’t really pay much attention. I did my readings, got A’s on my quizzes and went on with my merry life. Until last week, when people turned in these pages and pages of lists of things they’d found on Chaucer. I thought, maybe, this is some kind of voluntary thing. Gee, those kids are so diligent, doing research on something they haven’t even read yet. Then Monday, they all go their assignments back and I think I saw grades on them, or at least comments. And so I had to ask, “Ok what the heck is this?” I got some pretty crazy looks. So now my homework’s late. Then, I realized Tuesday that I had completely missed a community service project that was worth 5% of my grade in my ethics class. I just forgot all about it. I spent all day Saturday cleaning my own room instead of cleaning the houses of poor, elderly people. My professor told me that she wanted to challenge the irrevocable nature (that means you can’t make it up) of the assignment, so I should think of some community service project that was really impressive and get back with her. I’m thinking of a childrens’ outreach program that a lady at MorningStar does, but I haven’t contacted her yet. Ve shall see.

Needless to say, I’m in a whirlwind right now. I already went ahead and dropped the extra class I was auditing, and now I’m just hoping to become a great deal more efficient. Because the only thing else I can drop is Xanga and I’m really loathe to do that. Monday night I hid in my room and did my homework assignment and refused to answer the phone or email or IM or anything. I felt pretty childish doing it, but I just didn’t want to talk to anybody. My understanding is that there were people all over campus trying to find me. My roommate came into the room and laughed at me and said (in his quiet Japanese way), “You’re hiding!” And I said, “Yep!” I’m so glad somebody understood.

Also: I guess other things than just dreams come up. I was sick last night. Here I was, already tired from freaking out about school and I ate something bad in the cafeteria. I thought I was just tired to the point of being dizzy and nauseous, so I went to bed, but when I woke up at 5:30 this morning “tired to the point of being dizzy and nauseous” I decided that maybe it was something else. This is proof of an English major: What was I doing in my sleep? I was rehashing the story of Frankenstein and trying to prove that the monster never really existed in the story, but was simply a figment of Dr. Frankenstien’s dementia. I was sure of this because I knew that every time the monster showed up and talked to Frankenstein, he was overcome with a rush of dizziness to the point of nausea. I was never able to prove my point entirely, though, because I eventually woke up.

What I really wanted was Pepto Bismol, but since that wasn’t available, I decided to get up and try for a soda from the dorm vending machine. I hopped down from my bunk (a feat in itself when you want to throw up) found the coin jar and shivered my way to the laundry room. I dished out the low low price of $1.00 and put in my first nickel. Fortunately, I realized immediately that something was wrong when the nickel when “chink” instead of the usual “chinkle-dink shiver shiver plish.” I looked in and there was a pile of money stuffed right inside the coin slot. Man, I tried everything. I got my keys out and tried to shove those coins around. I undid a paperclip. I broke the hook off of a hanger on the door of a washing machine in my attempt to un wind it so I could use it to shove the coins around. Nothing. I had no dollar bills, so I was not going to get a nice cool sprite. Eventually, I decided I was better enough just from being vertical for a while and went back to bed. For the most part, I think I’m better now. I was sort of pleased to know that my roommate was also feeling sick this morning and had eaten the same thing I did at dinner last night. Misery loves company. I am, however, going to tell the cafeteria staff in vain hopes that they won’t give us leftovers this time.

Shutting up now (to quote a little leprechaun)
KB

Nothing important to report at the moment. Life is moving on at its own beleaguered pace. My new backpack showed up today. When my old backpack wore out, I had a shoulder bag my sister gave me from yakpak. It came highly recommended as being from the same company as that of our favorite artist, Piro. I got it for Christmas or something. It’s red and it’s got pockets and zippers and everything. And, I found out recently, it comes with a lifetime guarantee. If I manage to break it, I can get a new one or something. Unfortunately, my cool little shoulder bag is too small for an English major with 20 hours of classes this semester. So I ordered another one. $40 or so for a bag guaranteed to last as long as I do. Pretty good deal, I thought. Except, when it came, it was made of rip-stop nylon. I’m sure I read on the website, but it never clicked that nylon is thin. I mean, they make parachutes out of this stuff and all, but… golly. So I’m still not sure I trust it. But at least I have a backpack that can hold all my books again.

Yeah. This is why I don’t like to write about my personal goings on. Real life is boring, unless your name is Greg Dean.

KB