Sakura of DOOM

Flight still delayed for another hour or two. Of course, that's what they said an hour or two ago. They also said that we could get on a later flight, and since I am sick and jetlagged and about to keel over, I figured I'd just go back to my sister's and do that, except the ticket guy I just called said that he couldn't. Am now going to complain to people at the counter.

Argh.

Ah, the joys of LJ and being able to spew my frustration onto everyone else...

And by "I have wireless, yay!" I actually meant, "I purchased a stinking router with a hardware defect that died on me."

Thankfully, technical support guy assured me that I was not cursed even though my previous router died on me, because my laptop had the same problems connecting.

So there. For once, it's not me.

On the other hand... stupid router. I hate you.

ETA: #(*&$@(*&#$

Also, I just checked Newegg's site, and for some reason, they won't give me a number for returning the damn thing, even though it didn't say anywhere on the product page that it couldn't be returned. Linksys' site also says that the product has to be returned to the retailer.

I hate everyone right now, particularly stupid stores that don't take back faulty products and stupid hardware companies that put out faulty versions and keep them out there even though they know that product line has problems. And, for that matter, stupid stores (again) for stocking said faulty version and not saying anything about it or allowing a return or refund!! ARGH!!!!

I am supremely irritable today. Therefore I shall make a nice numbered list of all the things that are currently annoying me so I can mull upon them in an organized fashion.

1. Either a) my dry cleaner has shrunk my pants (again), which means a) I shall have to find another dry cleaner b) I have gained weight so my pants no longer sit as low as they did or c) my pant legs have always been this short but I never noticed with boots on. None of these options makes me happy. C) is probably the best bet, but I am still irritated by the inches of bare leg that now show when I sit down.


2. Six billion urgent things to deal with keep popping up at work so I can't concentrate on my projects.


3. It looks like it will rain. Again. In the middle of June. In California.


4. The Inside made me really sporky and now I am grumpy again because why does it seem so hard to find a good TV show with strong female characters?


5. The LJ team has implemented tags, which are a good idea. However, they do not work with S1, and I am lazy and don't want to figure out how to re-implement all my custom layouts in S2. I am also lazy and don't want to go through 1000+ entries and recategorize all of them. I may just hold off and wait until someone miraculously comes up with a system that allows you to tag your entries and then automatically uses those tags to update Memories. While I am wishing for the moon, I also want a system that retroactively tags everything via Memories categories.


6. I bought a new wireless card for the little portable laptop my dad gave me from his office, but even though the card works, I still can't get on the internet or my home network, so I still can't do LJ from the couch, which is all I really want. Ok, now I'm just sounding whiny, because having the extra laptop is happy. But useless if I can't go online with it

Urgh. My mom's phone call was somehow the catalyst that has made me grumpy and mad and frustrated. I feel like I'm too fat, I'm eating too much and too frazzled and tired and lazy to exercise, I haven't been putting in many hours at the bookstore, the boy is not here, my face is breaking out, I've found two new moles and am freaking out about those, my new pants are tight, the house is a mess, and why in the name of all that is holy does my mom keep pestering me to either cook or exercise?? Why does this matter so much to her? Why does she think I have to cook, even though I am tired and frazzled when I get home from work and all I want to do is microwave something at the most? And why can't she stop carping on my weight?

And why hasn't Amazon shipped my ROTK:EE, which I desperately want to watch before I leave for home, or at least so I can bring it home and watch it on a nicer TV?

Must do too many things before I leave for home, and I'm tired and frustrated and want to do nothing but sleep.

Argh. This message has been brought to you by That Time of Month, along with the letter Q.

oyceter Just because...

Am extremely irked today. Finished Angel-Seeker yesterday, and was so pissed off at it that I promptly got up and started another book instead. Woke up today to the incredibly annoying high-pitched whine of buzzsaws, or something. Apparently the apartment people are trimming tree branches. Why do they do this on my day off?! Why can I not be allowed to sleep after 8?! Why why why?!

Yeah, I am very annoyed. It was not a good way to wake up. And the buzz penetrates pretty much any attempt to block it out, even with my iPod playing full blast, hooked up to the boy's noise-cancelling earphones. My god. I was ready to jump out there and strangle people.

The thing that is the most annoying though is that it's not an isolated incident. Oh no. Every single freaking Wed. I am unpleasantly shaken out of much needed sleep to leaf blowers. Who blow leaves for HOURS. ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH.

Thank god I'm moving soon.

So now I have a giant headache and am too pissed off to go run errands.

---

Watched "There's No Place Like Home" yesterday, and wow, that was a good episode. MT is incredibly creepy sometimes.

Excited about the Angel finale, still scared to death that Joss is somehow going to end up killing everyone. Also scared that Wes is going to get it.

Currently very irked because I was shopping for suits. Apparently there are no good suits to be found when one needs them. I feel this is the First Law of shopping -- things that you actually need now (as opposed to: will be practical eventually) can never be found. This holds true even if said thing should be something easy to find, like black pants.

Actually, it's not that I couldn't find any. It's that I couldn't find any that fit! Grrr. Much less find anything on sale... There'd be a suit jacket my size, but no bottom, or the perfect bottom, but a jacket cut that was totally wrong, and after going to three different stores, I was about to tear my hair out.

Shopping is only fun when done in leisure, during sales so one can pick up stuff for later in the season. This is why I buy my winter coats at the end of January and summer stuff during late August. Plus, suits are really boring. I kept wanting to drift off to look at happy bright summer colored clothes with all sorts of frills and whatnot. They look like such cheerful clothes!

Also, despite my Dress for Success rant, I find I am drawn more to skirt suits because it is absolutely impossible to find pants that fit. The waist is too big and the hips are too small, it makes my butt look big, it makes my thighs look big, they assume my waist is somewhere where it is not naturally located, they assume my legs are a lot longer than they actually are, etc. Impossible. At least with skirts, if the hips and waist fit, you're about ready to go.

ETA: also insanely jealous of everyone going to WisCon. Argh! It looks so interesting!

Sometimes I hate my job. I got very very irked today because of customers who can't seem to figure out that one can put books back right where one finds them!! I was all excited because there was a big gap in my shelf and I thought people had actually bought stuff, but noooo... turns out that person had just pulled off a fourth of the shelf and stacked it on the floor, mixed with all these other books. WTF?!

Not today, but a while ago, I find an empty software box in my section, which means some rat bastard has shoplifted another game. I hate these people too. They are refusing to pay the 12 or 15 dollars for a game that is usually 40-50 dollars! And if they're stealing video games, I'm thinking they're not poor little kids just trying to get food, because they have computers and everything! Dude. Robbing used bookstores that really do need that 15 dollars is not cool.

Times like this I want to line up the nasty customers so I can kick them all in the shins while I make them pick up their own messes. Grrrrr.

I think I am not really suited to customer service. There must be people out there who are good at this, right?

And a bad day gets even worse, as my laptop goes from making vaguely wrong hard drive noises to the blue screen of doom, sounds that are perfectly reminiscent of the FIRST time my hard drive crashed, to refusing to reboot. Luckily I managed to back up some of my personal files before the entire thing went kaput. Unluckily, I didn't get all of them. Even worse, my warranty ran out, probably sometime last month, just to piss me off even more.

Need I repeat that this is a new hard drive, installed in my laptop after the first new hard drive did the exact same thing five months after I got this brand new laptop? The only reason I am not typing in all caps to indicate total and complete hair-rending frustration and impotent anger at Toshiba is because I'd be capitalizing absolutely everything. I think they should forget about repairing it, try to recover all my data for free, and then give me my money back so I can go buy a Dell. My first Toshiba lasted three years and probably could have kept on going. This one has hit a year and a month after one equivalent to a near-fatal heart attack.

I am so pissed off.

I'm so mad right now. First of all, I'm stupid. I just remembered today, before Dean's date, when everything is due, that I have not one paper due tomorrow, which I thought, but TWO. And the second one is seven pages long. It shouldn't seem long compared to the stupid thesis, but after the thesis, I just feel so burned out. I do not want to write anymore. Ever. Why does my university not understand this?

Secondly, I finally went in and talked the prof. who's giving me comps for Chinese lit. And I swear, none of my professors have any idea what's going on. This is the first year my department has decided to do real comps, as opposed to slipping a few questions in thesis defense, and no one seems to have any idea of how it's going to go. And this professor just kept getting everything wrong! I think he started assuming I didn't know anything about Chinese literature because I've only taken one course in it, as opposed to the *gasp* two I've taken in Chinese history, and started suggesting that we could concentrate on Japanese lit. Well, I don't know anything about modern Japanese literature, so I told him I'd very much prefer us sticking to the topic I picked in the first place. Then he asked me what Chinese history classes I've taken, and I told him I took one on the Qing dynasty and HIS 207 (East Asia up to the 1800s). And he said some random stuff about looking at Chinese history AFTER the Qing dynasty and comparing it to modern developments in Japanese history, completely ignoring or not knowing that HIS 207 is UP TO the 1800s, not after. I know nothing about modern Chinese history! Argh! And it just kept going like that... I'd say something and he'd completely misinterpret it. Finally, I think I got the point across that I can do lyric stuff in Chinese literature from the earliest forms up to the Song Dynasty. Which is a lot of stuff! It goes from 1000 BC to 1100 AD for heaven's sake!

So now, instead of feeling better about comps, I feel worse. I feel so screwed over by the department. All the professors I've taken classes from are not here right now -- they are on sabbatical or they have moved to another university entirely. So none of the professors giving me comps are ones I've taken classes under -- I don't know them, they don't know me, and I kind of think from the questions I've asked them, they think I'm totally stupid or something. I'd feel so much better if I were taking these with Profs. Howell and Kern, because I know them, they know me, I'd have a much better idea of what to expect, etc.

I must remember what S. said -- all that really matters right now is getting a grade high enough to graduate. This I can do. So: two crappy papers to write tonight, along with studying for pre-modern Japanese history (luckily, my strongest subject). Then tomorrow I'll check out the Chinese lit. anthology and reread poems from last year's Chinese lit. class. And watch Buffy of course. ARGH. I feel so stressed out. I hate this. I can't believe I was so stupid to actually completely forget about an entire paper!!

In other news, watched the Buffy wildfeed. Am completely confused and must watch again before even remotely beginning to clarify my thoughts. Will continue to use the fact about Angel's renewal to calm myself down and ignore the Spike-bashage making the rounds. Having faith in ME. Yes. Good job, me.