Sakura of DOOM

Am home sick. Have been feeling under the weather for some time, thanks to virulent allergies. Have slept for nearly 20 hours, so head hurts.

Feel guilty about being home sick, as have much to do at work, but head hurts too much to care.

Trying to figure out how to feed self without having to get dressed or shower.

Am quite gross right now.

Am horribly behind on LJ posting.

Have lost pronouns again.

On plus side, have little statues of Byakuya (the shinigami, not the rat) and Orihime, thanks to rachelmanija. Byakuya, Orihime and Urahara now protect the TV.

On minus side, would like to be shot and put out of misery.

Blargh. I am in the office until 9pm today. Blargh, I say, blaaaargh.

I swear, I will post something with actual content soon. I think the current randomness has been sparked by lack of sleep and the futile attempt to kick my caffeine habit (Attempt #1523).

I wish coffee weren't so tempting.

I would just like to say that dentistry sucks. Went in for my first examination in a year or so, since I used to get my teeth checked every time I went home, and I have five cavities. Five. And one is a bad one.

The dentist took care of two today, and now half of my mouth is completely numb, and so I drool somewhat if I'm trying to rinse. Yay anesthetic.

I used to have braces as a kid, and I had a root canal before, and something about the high-pitched whine of the drill drives me crazy. I cringe. It is possibly the most painful sound in the world. But, as stated before, yay anesthetic, because it hurt less than usual (which does seem to be the point of anesthetic, after all).

One time I had this much local anesthetic in my jaw, I chewed up my cheek thinking that it was pizza. It's very strange to not quite be able to move about half of your mouth, and the tongue numbness is especially odd.

I'm sure everyone was quite interested in this ;).

Am tired, head hurts, and am coming down with something resembling a cold. Hack hack. I can feel the capacity for something resembling intelligent comments and replies and entries draining away by the minute ;). Mostly am on pins and needles waiting for Company to call me back.

Also, note to self, while Wizard of the Pigeons is a good book, it is not necessarily the most optimal book to read while feeling vaguely depressed and greyish in mood. Will instead continue the reread of Sorcery and Cecelia.

Really do not want to go to interview tomorrow.

Wish job search were corporeal so I could stab it to death with sporks.

Don't know why I keep doing this to myself -- went to bed last night at 4:30, have to get up at 8 for work. There's not even a good reason I stay up so late, because half the time I'm just wasting time anyway.

And from the week I had a cold, I was going to bed and getting 10 hours a night, and wow, it felt good. No bleary eyes in the morning, improved temper, bouncier all around. So I know doing the whole sleep deprivation thing just puts me in a bad mood to start out with, which is something I really don't need. And yet, I keep doing it.

Stupid me.

First post of the year... this feels odd, like it's supposed to be momentous. Oh well.

I'm really sick of winter. Not that I wasn't before, but now that Christmas is over, I want it to be summer again. Or spring at least. I think I definitely have some version of seasonal affective disorder, because all this dark is driving me crazy. It's weird because I'm such a night owl too! But I work from 9-6, so there's that brief glimmer of day during the ten minute drive to work, but usually it's grey and cloudy. Then inside all day, and not even close to a window =(. Then by the time I leave, the sun's already set! Argh. I miss my hour-long lunches in the park soaking up sunshine... those helped a lot. Now it's too cold to do that.

Well. I will keep in mind that when summer does come here, it comes full force, with sun till 9!

Awful day.

Comps sucked beyond telling (but of course, I will try anyway).

I didn't know any of the professors, so there wasn't a nice good credit thing, where they knew something like, "Oh, Oyce. Yeah, she writes good papers, has a pretty solid grasp." So I felt like there was just no leeway given at all. Then, seriously, I think no amount of studying would have really helped. The questions started out as extremely broad, then each professor would just completely pick at everything. Um, how am I supposed to know when Japanese prostitution became outlawed? The one professor who didn't seem out to get me was half an hour late (comps are an hour), and the other two just seemed like bitches. Even though they're guys. The Chinese lit. one didn't fricking ask me about Chinese lit!! The hell?! No, instead he wanted me to compare Chinese poetry of the Tang Dynasty (which I DO know about) to Japanese waka (which I DON'T know about and told him multiple times previously that I hadn't taken any Japanese literature courses). Hate him so much. So I just got increasingly flustered and scared as they kept gunning at me, and in the end, one of the scary ones asked me a question, I gave the answer that I had gotten in another class, he brushed it off and told me to have another answer. Well, I couldn't think of one so there was complete silence for a few minutes. Felt like forever before the kind of nice professor finally said something like, maybe we should move on.

I don't know. I just felt so screwed over because I've never taken a class with any of these professors. They don't know me. Obviously, from yesterday's wonderful email, they don't seem to care that much about my comps. I felt like they were extremely annoyed to be there at nine in the morning and just hated me or something because my area of expertise wasn't there's. Sorry if the stupid department doesn't have comps in the area of modern Japanese popular culture. Sheesh. Then they were just mean. It was totally different from thesis defense. It seemed as though they weren't there to see if I had a good overview of trends in these things. Chinese lit. guy just kept picking at the weirdest points that made no sense to me -- wanted me to "prove" that nanshoku/male-male love was in existence in Tokugawa Japan instead of just literature. I was just like, huh? Beats me. That's what all the criticism says. Did he somehow expect me to pull out Tokugawa law about this or something? Just, so many stupid nit-picky questions disguised as "broad." And all the nice professors that I do know (and like me) are on leave or left for another university!! The hell? Versus the Chinese side, which is stock full. And it was like they weren't even listening to me. Like they just wanted a single, good answer, bam, and either you're right or you're wrong. Either that, or they would pick holes in everything which of course I couldn't counter because they were the experts and I've only taken a few courses on this.

Then, to top things off, I went back to bed and tried very hard not to think about it. Then I get a message from a friend that my roommate had called to say that I'd just missed thesis defense. Yup. Apparently the thesis defense that I thought was tomorrow at 10 was today. I am an idiot. The stupid thing was, I didn't even sleep through it or anything. Nope. Instead, I misread the comps/defense schedule at least ten times, walked right past my thesis defense room as soon as comps finished and went to bed. I called the dept. secretary and it was rescheduled to two today.

I think my sensei was kind of annoyed. Luckily, I know him and have been taking Japanese for four years now with him and other teachers and they all like me. And I'm usually very punctual for class and do my work, so he knew this was an oddity. And I feel my thesis advisor likes me and understands too. I bet if I had done this with comps, they just would have cut my head off or something. After apologizing profusely for my profound stupidity, I did thesis defense. Which, luckily wasn't that difficult, because I was going to study and practice Japanese (ten minutes of it is in Japanese) today. Ugh.

Thankfully, the thesis has actually been about 5 years in the making, ever since I really got interested in anime and manga, and I think I've at least thought about most things. Also, neither professor specializes in manga or has actually read the criticism, so I was the expert there. That was nice. And mostly they talked and asked me good questions that were pretty easy because I realized I had thought of most of them before. And the entire atmosphere was different. I felt like they were there not to attack my thesis and rip it to shreds, but just to figure out why I did some things in there, to point out things I might have missed. It felt like constructive criticism as opposed to being flamed. And apparently, I can still speak Japanese. Had a few problems with conjugations that I had briefly forgotten, but it's nice to know that one semester of not speaking the language does not negate the other three and a half years of classes.

And now, I will go to work, watch the Matrix, then go to AMC and watch Matrix Reloaded. At least there's a happy end to today.

My head hurts like mad. It also seems as though the Google job I just bought a $300 ticket for is not a full-time job, but contract work that could very probably not pay all of my forthcoming bills. The weather's muggy, and I just woke up today on the wrong side of bed.

Houseparties starts tomorrow, so hopefully it gets a bit cooler so that all the boys aren't sweltering hot in their tuxes. Can't wait for lawnparties on Sunday, in which I can simply chill on the lawn, eat nice food, and listen to bands. Least houseparties weekend always feeds me well. Hopefully Sarah will give me her lobster.

Watched two episodes of Farscape so far in my effort to find a new, non-Buffy tv series, and it looks quite promising. I adore Aeryn Sun so far, and the rest of the characters seem interesting. Now need to find the fandom!

Gah! Studying for my ELE exam is melting my brain! Into slag! As can be seen in my oh-so-witty subject...

Murp.

Must remember strange things about bit rates and sampling things and modulation and and and

I forgot why taking an electrical engineering class, even an easy one, was a good idea. Or why I actually wanted to know how my cell phone works. Must remember next time to remain a clueless consumer and leave tech stuff to tech people.

*kicks PowerPoint notes*

First day of classes. It's so sad. My first class is at 1:30 every day. Yet I'm still on West Coast schedule -- going to bed at 7 in the morning here and waking up at 3 in the afternoon. So I've already missed lunch. I hate feeling guilty about my extremely messed up sleep schedule, but I do anyway. Hopefully I can get it back to something resembling normal soon. Off to class now.