Eclecticism

It’s been a while since I’ve actually said anything on here, hasn’t it? So it goes, sometimes. This past school quarter was a rather unpleasant one, and online babbling became a pretty low priority for me. So, some random updates on the world around me…

School: Ugh. Glad that this last quarter is done with. Had one absolutely hellish class (Spanish 102, with insane amounts of homework and frequently unpleasant classroom experiences) that pretty much took over my life, and to very little positive end result, as the 2.3 final grade will attest to. On the bright side, I passed, but it was really frustrating (especially as this is the first quarter that I’ve been taking a full 12-credit load and didn’t end up with a high enough GPA to be on the Dean’s List) — and resulted in my re-thinking my schedule, dropping Spanish 103 (as it’s taught by the same teacher as this last quarter’s 102 class) and entirely rejiggering my last quarter. I’m now lined up for POL230 International Relations, WMN200 Intro to Women’s Studies, and DRA121 Acting. Should make for a decent senior quarter, and then I graduate in the spring with my AA. Yay!

Work: Proceeds as ever. I’m still selling cameras for the Ritz empire, and still enjoying it. We’ve got a pretty good team and a good little store, and lots of fun toys to play with. Of course, there is the constant good-natured one-upmanship when one or another of us gets a new toy, and I think I’ve fallen behind (I got my Nikon D70s about a year and a half back, then Ns got a Nikon D50 and later upgraded to a Nikon D80, R got a Nikon D40, L got a Pentax K10d, and now Ng just got a Canon 40D — I think we’ve just looped around back to me, anyone want to toss me $1800 for a D300?), but that’s all just part of the fun. In all honesty, for a ‘mall retail job,’ I do enjoy this one.

Home: As cute as our little apartment is, we’re both looking forward to this summer, as current plans have us moving down to the Des Moines area to be closer to Prairie’s job after I graduate. The apartment is in an old-ish (60’s-era?) building, and there are a number of little things that we’re not fond of: single-pane windows that don’t insulate well and rattle every time a car drives, slams its doors, or has music playing too loud; cracks in the plaster ceiling in the bathroom; and we think that there’s some mold or fungus somewhere that keeps both of us just over the line from being quite entirely healthy. We’ll be fine while we’re out and about, then come home and immediately start sniffling a bit…then once we leave the apartment again, we’re fine. Our favorite part, though, is the neighbors who have no concept of ‘inside voices’ or anything else that goes along with conscientious apartment living, and have a tendency to get into rather noisy fights (and we’re concerned about potential domestic violence). On top of that, our building managers, while very nice people, aren’t very effective people, and we’ve long since given up trying to get anything done short of an absolute emergency. We’re definitely ready to find something better.

Other: This past week’s been Spring Break, and I’ve been enjoying the chance to simply take a few days to relax and putter around without any big “gotta do” things hanging over my head. Of course, more than a few days without much of anything scheduled leaves me a little stir-crazy, so today I came out to Des Moines with Prairie to keep her company during her workday. It’s been nice to get a look at the Highline Community College campus where Central Washington University has the branch campus for which Prairie’s heading up the writing center. Tomorrow’s going to be my ‘get ready for spring quarter’ day, clearing out my notebook from last quarter and getting everything ready to go for the next round of classes.

Photos: I haven’t been doing much with my camera lately, unfortunately — that became another casualty of the Class from Hell. I did use a little bit of my tax refund to pick up a little pocket camera — a cute little Casio EX-Z77 that I keep with me so that I can get snapshots during those times when I don’t want to haul the big camera around, which has been helping. Still, I’m feeling a little photography-deprived…hopefully I’ll be able to change that this summer, if I don’t get a chance this spring. Since I needed to decompress (and spend some time with my girl) after last quarter, I decided to forego Norwescon this year (prior Norwescon photos are here, here and here) — a bit of a bummer, but a very necessary and good decision — and as I have to work this weekend, I won’t be able to check out Sakura-Con, so this spring is looking to be sadly devoid of costume-clad fanboys and fangirls. Such a pity! Maybe I’ll be able to swing by the Emerald City ComiCon in May to feed my geek voyeur tendencies (prior ComiCon photos are here and here).

And…once again, I think that pretty much catches everything up for now. Until later, then…

Generally speaking, I don’t get sick very often. The occasional sniffles or light cold, but not much more than that. I made up for it this weekend, though, when I managed to come down with some nasty 48-hour-ish flu bug. Saturday evening I had a little bit of a headache, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to make me worry. Prairie and I had a good mexi-goo dinner (a bit of experimentation on her part, somewhere between enchilada and casserole), watched some Frasier, and went to bed. As the night wore on, though, I started feeling queasy…and then the bug hit. From 3am until 8am, I had nearly hourly trips to the restroom to puke, accompanied by cold sweats, and fever hovering around 100 degrees. Not fun in the least!

Sunday I ended up spending most of the day sleeping, trying to catch up on the sleep I’d missed Saturday night. We carefully fed me drinks (clear liquids only), crackers, and white bread, which stayed down most of the day…then one last puke session Sunday night brought it all back up again. Thankfully, the fever broke last night, and everything I’ve munched on today has stayed down. I was able to spend today in bed again (with a short run onto campus to turn in an assignment that had to be in today), and it looks like the worst is over. Still, while I hate missing two days of work and one of school, at least I don’t find bugs like this very often. It’s been years since I’ve had anything like this — here’s hoping it’s another good many years before another such bug gets me!