Life is a Cabaret

My first week in DC, I get an earthquake and a hurricane.

I have never been through a hurricane before. We might get power outages lasting 3-5 days, and I have no idea how to handle that. I'm going to stock up on non-perishable food tomorrow, but my microwave, stove, and oven are all electric, so I doubt I'll be able to cook anything.

I've been reading tips like filling the bathtub with water for cleaning and flushing the toilet, but it's like...I have never flushed a toilet without running water. I'm not even sure how that works.

And school still starts on Monday. (So far, at least.) This means that I still have to actually read and try to brief cases for my first classes, in the middle of a hurricane when I might not have any power and I don't know if the storm will let us have much natural light. At least I do have a flashlight, but still, I doubt this is gonna be much fun.

Gah. Hurricanes.

So many things have been happening. I'd been intending to post a lot more when I was in Ireland, but I ended up too busy to spend much time on the internet, and I'm...not really going to complain about that. Because Ireland was awesome and gorgeous and a week was not enough time, except that it was also expensive so it's just as well that I only spent a week there.

And the weather was good! When I'd looked up the weather it seemed like it was supposed to rain the entire time, which depressed me. But then I got there and it didn't rain very much! Lots of sun! When it rained, it was usually when I was on the bus. So I was very pleased with that.

thunderemerald, I went to Dingle. I also might have got food poisoning in Dingle, because we had lunch there and I started feeling sick after that, then spent the night throwing up and sleeping for roughly thirteen hours, and then felt pretty much fine the rest of the week.

Saturday night really sucked. I really should have just flown home. I was on my way back to London via ferry and trains when I got on what ended up being the wrong train. It was the right train line, and the right platform -- it was just too early, but trains can just sit and wait awhile, so I thought that's what that one would be doing. I should have just looked at the departure board because then I would have seen that this particular train was going to Manchester, not London.

I got off at the first stop and found out that there were no more trains going to London that night, which meant I had to find some place to spend the night. I almsot cried when the guard told me. I went back to Crewe, where I'd gotten on the wrong train, had to buy a new ticket for the next morning, and then had to find a hotel. My host mum told me when I got home that she would have spent the night in the train station rather than pay for a hotel, and maybe I should have (I do wince at paying the money), but between stress, nerves (spending the night, trying to sleep, alone, in a train station in a foreign country?), and the discomfort of trying to sleep on benches, I didn't think I'd be able to sleep at all, and I do not function well when I don't get enough sleep. I probably would have bungled getting home even worse than I already had.

And I wanted to get home as quickly as I could because I had Star Wars in Concert at three in the O2 Arena, and the Jubilee tube line, which would have taken me straight there, was down for engineering work that weekend. That would have been fine if I'd gotten home on Saturday night and therefore had enough time to get myself to the O2 on Sunday, but instead I was on a train back. I ended up being fifteen minutes late to the show, but it was a great show, and I'm just glad I made it at all.

I've been reading reaction posts for The Eleventh Hour, and talked to the big DW fan in my program. I've been trying to see it for myself, but it's not been happening. Last night I tried watching with BBC iplayer, which did work (hooray for being in Britain!), except there are those issues with the internet on my laptop, and iplayer won't work where there is no internet connection, so I only saw the first fifteen minutes. I got to school today thinking I'd just download it, but I've been having issues doing that, and I don't want to use iplayer on a school computer because there are other people in the computer lab and I don't want to disturb them.

The universe is conspiring to stop me from watching Moffat's Who. I wonder if this is a sign.

Finally home. Well, I got home on Thursday night after what was probably the worst of my drives to and from school. It rained throughout Washington and Oregon, and then the sun set not long after I got into California, so I had to do the worst road in the dark. Two-lane highway in the middle of a forest with snow on the side of the road in the dark and signs warning for ice all over--gah. There was thankfully no ice, but that was about the only positive.

But when I got home there were Christmas cards waiting for me--thank you, shinyopals, imadra_blue, and fiery_twilight!

In other news, yuletide is...started. *sigh* I know what I'm doing with it; it's just the words that are being stubborn. But I'm just going to power through tomorrow, and then it'll be nice to have that done. It's been a long time since I've written fic--not since remixredux09.

There's a New Years Resolution, then, though I don't normally go in for them. Still, next year I really hope to write more fic.

Though tonight when I was trying to write yuletide, I heard the West Wing title music. Apparently my parents have been watching S1, so I went out and watched a couple episodes with them. S1 is definitely what got me hooked on the show, but it's not my favorite season--actually, I'm not sure I have one. Mostly what I love are various episodes rather than seasons. But anyway, my mom watched the show as it was airing (which was ten years ago now! wow), but she didn't remember very much so she kept asking me what happened later. We also discussed the politics in the show, because you know, I find I appreciate the show even more with every politics class I take.

Okay. Time to shut up here and work more on yuletide.

Had my first day of work today. 9:30 to 5:00. I'm also scheduled tomorrow and Sunday for 7-8 hour shifts, then nothing for the rest of the week. Of course weekends are a theater's busiest times, and they told me in the beginning they weren't going to schedule me too many days until I proved I was actually going to show up, but right now I'm wondering if all my shifts are going to be full shifts. I mean, this is only my second paying job, but at Round Table I had 4-5 hour shifts as well as 8 hours. I hope Cinemark also schedules shorter shifts, even if only on weekdays.

Mostly because my feet are killing me. I'm working concessions, which is an easy job so far, while still keeping me busy enough that I didn't get bored. I'm fine with the job, and fine with working for seven or eight hours. I've just never had a job that kept me on my feet all day, so they really hurt.

Anyone have any advice for what to do to minimize the soreness? I'm going to be standing just as long tomorrow and the next day, and I'd like them to be less than a complete misery.

I am so tired. Pretty much all day I have wanted nothing more than to just go back to sleep. Right now I'm having difficulty staying awake, even though it's not even ten yet and I never go to bed this early.

I wish my body would stop anticipating itself. Whenever I have to be up at a particular time, my body wakes me up at least an hour too early. I mean, it's nice that I pretty much can't oversleep, but when I'm already having difficulty sleeping, waking up too early totally does not help.

What also does not help is writing boring papers. I am writing my paper that's due on Monday--I'm three pages in and the minimum is five. But I'm trying to summarize a book and I'm so tired and it's bloody boring and I just want it to be over. I could stop now, since I still have several more days before it's due, but then I'd just feel guilty for not doing as much as I could right now. And since papers unfortunately don't magically write themselves, me wanting this paper to be over means that I have to do it myself, and really, the sooner I get it over with, the better I'll feel.

I just want to go to sleeeeeep...

*snoozes*

ETA: Hah, finished! The minimum is five pages and I did exactly that, but this was just a rough draft and my teacher is going to be poking at it so it might very well grow. But that will just be editing, not me having to write another five pages. Win!

So today shinyopals posted a brilliant essay on why she doesn't like Steven Moffat. It's very comprehensive and something I agree with completely. Honestly, pretty much all Moffat has are some funny jokes and great one-liners--everything else falls apart with greater analysis.

In school news, I register for spring on Monday, and I was just looking at course offerings because registration started yesterday and I wanted to make sure the classes I picked were still open. They're all still open, but the time of one of them was changed, so now it conflicts with another one. Gah! Now I need to figure out my schedule again. *sigh*

It's fall break, which is the four-day weekend after midterms that marks the half-way point of the semester. Today I slept in and hung around on the internet, but this evening I was feeling stir-crazy so I called heart_of_man and she came over and we talked for a couple hours and then watched New Earth. That was nice.

What is not nice is that apparently the only food available on campus during fall break is from the diner. There's not really anything wrong with the diner--it's good enough food. But there's not that much variety, and there's even less on Saturday nights, so basically I had a choice of sandwich, spaghetti, or hamburger/cheeseburger. I ended up with a hamburger, but I'd really wanted a calzone, except the place that serves them is closed for fall break. *sigh*

I have a rough draft of an essay due after we get back, but I'm not worried about that. In my creative writing class, we're going to be doing teacher conferences about our stories instead of class on Friday and Monday, and I'm like raieuagjdakgs. She implied she mostly wants to talk about the most recent story we turned in, except I am very unsatisfied with that story and I don't want to talk about it. I know what I did wrong and I have some ideas on how I can fix it, but I just want to not think about it for awhile rather than go over it again with her and listen to advice about the damn thing. Gah.

I think right now I mostly just want something interesting to happen, something that doesn't feel like it's just dragging on and on and on. I think I need to get out of my dorm for a bit, but it's midnight and I'm getting tired and I'm by myself. I think I might just go to Safeway and see if I can find something I really want to eat.

Wow, isn't my life just so exciting? XD

I haven't been around much lately. As is obvious by this being only the second time I've posted in November, and there's not even an hour left of it. *snorts* I wish I could see me getting better about posting soon, but I don't really. I'm just...feeling rather apathetic about most things right now.

I haven't started my yuletide fic yet, though I know what I'm doing and have composed about half of it in my head. I haven't finished going through my source material again yet, and I'm not sure I will before the deadline, but I'm pretty sure I won't need to. I definitely will write the fic, though; I've wanted to do yuletide for years.

It will be good to write something again. I haven't written anything since my West Wing fic, back in July, and I need to. I've just always liked reading more, so right now it's sorta hard to get up the desire to write when there's things I want to read.

I have a headache, and the music I'm listening to feels way too appropriate. I'm going to stop thinking now.

So, today I went to the pool with some friends, and my feet got a bit sunburned.

Tomorrow is my dance recital, and my number has fast, difficult, and complicated choreography. Wearing shoes and walking around on sunburned feet is bad enough, but tap dancing? This is gonna be fun. *sigh*