I found myself.

For those who know why I'm up at this hour:

My folks' plane finally got in. American Airlines, you fail.

I picked them up, they packed their car and are heading home.

I'm gonna be late tomorrow, but my branch chief has been warned.

sleep now.

ETA: ...I'd say rest in peace, George Carlin, but he wouldn't be happy that way. D:

Sooo... I had to take half a day of work off this morning because I got up and there was no word from a group member about her section of the paper.

Finally heard from her at 9:30, scrabbled to compile everything.

Paper sucked, but printed it out anyway because it was done.

Handed it to Dr. Z at 12:15 today and went to work.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE the semester is over!


NOTE TO SELF: E-mail your prof for Electronic Commerce to see if he will tell you if he plans to assign a group paper and if it's open-topic. If so, find out about a handful of topics NOW so you don't spend half the semester arguing with people about it. Lesson learned.

Not dead. Not totally crazy. But making myself buckle down on the final.

Plan to post an update/explanation on Wednesday. Honest.

More importantly:

Happy birthday, violetbloom!

Haven't been dead the past week or so, just... been pretty out of it due to allergies and other stuff.

1) The Soul Eater anime is total crack. th-thank you 24 Hours of Anime

1b) Studio Ghibli's Earthsea was kind of weird... and yet it made more sense to me than the TV miniseries did. Probably because I could not take Kristen Kreuk seriously in said miniseries.

2) Benadryl + caffeine makes for an interesting combo. And can quite possibly induce signs of the apocalypse. (Hey, did anyone notice hell freezing over Saturday afternoon? ...I'll expound on why later.)

3) Heat wave + promptly getting FREAKING COLD again = extreme difficulty getting up in the morning. I-I wish Maryland weather would get hormone therapy already or at least pick a temp and stick with it.

4) When you have the sinus headache that will not die, try writing your paper with a pen and paper because staring at the computer screen will just make your brain shut down. ...I'm positive this caused most of my lack of ability to progress on the paper this week.

5) Corollary to #4: COMMUNICATION IS GOOD. Even when you don't want to talk to your other group members. Just confess that you are stuck and brace yourself if the person you don't want to talk to is still trying to write a totally different paper than the rest of your group. Also, talking amongst the whole group is good too because then everyone can agree.

6) When I get back to work after being out sick and my boss wants to see me and I KNOW I didn't do anything wrong... it's usually good news. Like a performance award. (which in this case means extra money in the next paycheck) I shouldn't freak.

7) The SECOND I start blanking on something fic-related that's not RL or class-related, it's time to walk away and either do chores or homework.

8) Trying to fax something while running out the door will guarantee that the fax machine will screw with you.

ANYWAY GETTING TO THE POINT: I'm registered for G2008 but... have no room or plane tickets yet. Part of the reason is because the friends I was going to go with can't go now, and part of the reason is that I'm half-frightened that I will book tickets and then the airline will go "oh hey, we're bankrupt! find your own way home" like Airbus did to my Mom.

Anybody going who needs roommates? Or who can squeeze somebody in? I-I've got to work out the plane tickets myself but if I have roomies it'll help me plan how much time I can take off and know when to book tickets. I know I've been putting this off but stress and other things have pushed it to the back of my mind. Help?

*sigh* Okay, look. I know Otakon is huge. I know that slots fill up quickly.

But for the love of God, people - if you're going to close registration for the artists' alley less than 24 hours after you open it, ADVERTISE THE WINDOW WELL IN ADVANCE DAMMIT!

...I'm not even one of the people who was trying to get a table and I'm pissed off about this. Damn. So much for the live-action WoW quests. Boo.

So while slogging through papers for my group research paper, I read the first item in a reference list that made me laugh out loud:

Ivan Marc Author. "Some related article I wrote." Some Fine Journal, 99(7): 1-100, January 1999.

This was in a published paper for an international conference. The very first item.

I don't know which would be funnier: if that ref got in there by accident and they totally missed it or if that was a genuine reference.

Heh.

I AM SO TIRED.

Note to self: never compare grad school experiences with anyone else until you finish the Master's. Because there is NOTHING more demoralizing than talking to someone who started hers a year after you did, is still working full-time, is taking a 42-credit Master's while yours is 36 and blithely talks about taking 4 class (read: 12 credit) semesters and how she'll be done in December. Nothing.

How the hell do you take a 12-credit semester and work full time without basically dumping half your work on other people? How? I want her secret.

I need some help.

Namely, I'm in need of NON-SUCKY CROCK-POT RECIPES that:

- can cook for like 7-8 hours on low,

- involve chicken (or anything but that's what I have on hand)

- don't require hard-to-find or wasteful* ingredients

- don't take 10 hours of prep.

...do these exist? Bueller?

Real post later. Doing homework.

*By which I mean, I don't want to go buy an entire thing of bacon for like four strips' worth in a recipe.

Which is it? You decide. 40 icons below the cut, fairly random spread of icons I decided to make or had but never shared or pimped out. These can be used as bases, but please credit. :)

( Yeah, maybe a little of both. )