posted 2005/01/30 at 20:20
So yeah, I'm sick again. This time Heather got the bug first, though, as opposed to the past few times when I've seemed to be the first person in the family to get a bug (and then give it to all the folks). It still sucks, though, and while I'm sure I can take tomorrow off from school while I get over the worst of this, Tuesday I'll have to go in because I'll have too much important stuff to just miss.
One real big downer in all of this is that I really wanted to go see Hide and Seek this weekend; after watching Dakota Fanning do interviews for The Cat in the Hat a couple of years ago, I've become a big fan of hers; normally child celebrities irk me to no end, but she's really got her head on straight and she seems like she'll get to adulthood -- and beyond -- without falling into the child-star traps that have claimed so many others. Hopefully I'll be up to seeing it this next weekend.
Anyway, since the last time I was sick I saw a commercial for Zicam Nasal Gel and I thought I might try it out, but then I did some searching online and found that some people who have taken it claim to have permanently lost their sense of smell as a result, and I was like, "Um, no thank you." So instead of swabbing the inside of my nose with zinc, I'm taking zinc supplements and lozenges in the hopes of reducing the severity and length of whatever this is. Hopefully it won't take me too long to get over this, because I think the next arcade lock-in in Bowling Green is this coming weekend. (It was supposed to be yesterday but it got moved back because they hadn't done much to advertise it.)
So, um, yeah. My new Skechers are set to arrive by Tuesday, so I should have warm feet the next time I go out. Oh, and the Camry's headed back to the shop because the rear shocks are totally gone according to my father. (That explains last week's stomach aches, at least partly.) And I swear I will get to that political survey I promised I'd do on the .org here soon. For now, time to take more zinc ...
posted 2005/01/27 at 21:50
Turns out all those tummy troubles I was having this week may not have been stress-related after all. My car isn't the stablest in the world, but as I was driving today it was like it had no shocks whatsoever; I lost track of the number of times my head hit the roof just on my drive to school. It wasn't long after that when I started having trouble in my stomach. (This is why I'll never go on a roller coaster in my life.)
So yeah, um ... I'm lost. I'm not used to doing this, and I'm just not that good at reading people to start with. I've been talking to friends (and you know, actually giving them the details), and they've been of some help, but this whole thing is just driving me insane because I really don't know what to do. I hate it when I'm not in control of a situation to start with, but with something like this it's even more infuriating. And of course with things like this I never express my anger, I just internalize it, and that makes me feel even worse. Sigh.
Oh, and everyone in my family is coming down with something. How much longer until I get it, I wonder?
posted 2005/01/25 at 23:03
You know, I really should be happy right now. These past few days, though, I've been fighting through the worst stress-related maladies I can ever remember having. I'm honestly getting to the point where I'm overwhelmed, and I'm really tempted to just go and order a nice big greasy pizza and try to eat all of this away.
Please let this work out. Please.
posted 2005/01/23 at 23:40
For those of you who still remember maloneysbaloney.org, I just posted new material on there. I swear, my original plan was to have that article done before the election, but then I got sick and I had to catch up at school and I spent so much of winter break decompressing and ... sigh. Thankfully it looks like Maloney and company are enjoying a new wave of publicity, and since a site like mine is going to be more reactive than proactive by its nature, that should provide me with some more material to write about here in the near future.
I'd write something here about how I hate my job at the University, but I figure there are too many "I hate my job" posts in the blogosphere as it is and mine would be too redundant.
I actually watched part of the AFC title game earlier tonight. As much as I don't care for football as much as the other major North American sports (and not just because of the whole Bengals sucking thing), I have to admit that playoff football does have a certain addicting drama to it, even when I couldn't care less for the teams that are playing. I'm still missing hockey big-time, though, and I may pick up a copy of NHL 2005 here just to help me get my fix. (Is online play free on the PS2 version? I've never been able to figure out how much it costs to play games online on the PS2, whereas my XBox Live subscription -- I need it to download new songs for the DDR games -- means I don't have to worry about XBox games so much, with obvious exceptions like the PSO games.)
Oh, and I bought and installed Norton Systemworks earlier today. To all those who would deny the safety and security of my computer, I say, bring it ... URKomfgWHAZZIZPWNED.
Only kidding. For now, anyway ...
posted 2005/01/22 at 22:19
Gee, this snowstorm is so bad that UT shut down today. On a Saturday. Big freaking load of good that does me. (Edit: Apparently this was a record-breaker in terms of the amount of snow dumped on us. Gee, now only if it could have been on a freaking school day ...)
There's another lock-in in Bowling Green next weekend, but I'm not sure if I want to go. Last time I went, the pizza didn't look that appetizing (and I couldn't tell if any of them had any toppings), and the DDR machine down there has enough problems (bad pad, blown speaker, dark screen) that I can't do real serious DDR on it. Still, this time some of my Spectrum friends might be coming, including ... ah, not yet, not yet.
posted 2005/01/21 at 19:26
I've had tummy trouble all day today. I know part of it is thanks to the Mexican food I ate last night, but the other part ... well, at least some of you now know about it. The rest of you will just have to wait.
Remember a few months ago when I said that my shoes were starting to get holes in them? Well, today, after having much more snow seep into my socks than I care to remember this past month or so, I finally did something about it. I actually went to Dillards (Goddess help me) but they didn't have anything in my style, so I ordered another pair of Skechers off of the Internet just now. Given that my first pair lasted four years (not counting the black boots I never seem to wear for some reason), I'm hoping these last as well, although I'm guessing that all the DDR I've done this past year probably accelerated the decay of my old shoes to a great extent.
posted 2005/01/19 at 17:15
Couldn't sleep again last night, and this time I know why. Before I've felt close to doing this before but I really wasn't, but now ... now something is different. And I can't say too much more about that for privacy concerns/fear of jinxing things.
Normally I don't go all out and say something like this, but tomorrow around 2000 EST could you all just send good energy out my way? I'm already so nervous about this that I can't concentrate, and by that point I may well be shaking in my bucket hat. Thanks.
posted 2005/01/17 at 20:03
Gee, guess I fell off here again. Those of you who read my diet log probably have a bit of a clue as to what's going on, but if you have any questions, I'm not giving answers yet. Just wait, and hopefully this will all turn out for the best for everyone. But especially me. (Wow, since when did I get so selfish?)
Since I mentioned the first UT Un/Gagged meeting in the last post, I suppose I should follow up here. We didn't get that great a turnout, but with the limited amount of advertising we could do that's only to be expected. Actually, we got a bit of a boost because one of the local conservative talk radio guys mentioned the group on his show (in highly negative terms, of course), and we got at least one person to the meeting as a result. Anyway, I was elected President (duh), and until we get official recognition from the university (so we can post flyers all over campus and stuff like that), we're putting the group on hold. I can live with that, though.
I should also mention here that I've been able to cut down on my television watching a lot these past couple of weeks. It used to be that I'd watch all kinds of stuff, usually because I'd just get started watching and couldn't stop. (e.g. I'd watch Iron Chef and think I'd turn off the channel when it was done, but then Emeril Live would come on and I'd watch that too.) Other than getting my SVU fix, I'm really not watching much TV anymore, and of course that's for the best. (No, I didn't watch the debut of Iron Chef America last night, and you couldn't pay me to watch that shit.)
Can't think of much else to say here, but then again I'm understandably a bit preoccupied here. Time to get to homework and see what else I can do tonight.
posted 2005/01/12 at 16:17
Further adventures of the Shannon household: Last night my firewall kept catching that something was trying to put the klez virus on my computer. The attack was actually coming from my father's company's e-mail server every time I tried to log in to check e-mail. (Even though I haven't worked there for about three years, I still keep my old e-mail account from there.) I told my father about this last night, and he said he'd look into it in the morning. Instead he just logged onto his e-mail account as normal, and since he doesn't practice safe computing, guess who's going to be stuck fixing his computer? And he wonders why I stopped working for him.
In other news, tonight is the first meeting of the BDSM student group I'm trying to get started on campus. (For right now I'm calling the group UT Un/Gagged, but if anyone thinks of a better title I can change it.) I'm not as nervous as I thought I would be about it, strangely enough. I've done a bit of advertising around campus, but so far there haven't been any negative responses to it. I suppose that will only change over time, but hopefully even if I can't get the group officially recognized, tonight I'll at least get members of the BDSM community here on campus networked and talking to each other, and good things will come of that.
Oh, and I still haven't had a decent night's sleep here all this week. Hopefully I can at least get good rest tonight, because I really don't want to think about having a massive crash Thursday night.
posted 2005/01/11 at 17:19
So to make matters worse, I didn't get any sleep at all last night either. Honestly my mind isn't that troubled that sleep should be an issue, and physically I've been incredibly tired. I don't know what's causing this, but I'm about to leave campus here and I should go to the arcade for DDR tonight, but I'm seriously considering just going home and trying to sleep, even though I know I won't be able to get any exercise in Wednesday or Thursday.
Just to keep everyone up-to-date, I am in the middle of writing another article for maloneysbaloney.org; I haven't forgotten about it, I've just been dealing with other things. I need to write more for Backwash too, I know, and pretty much every section on the .org needs updating here. I still haven't gone in and changed the copyright date on each page, for crying out loud. Maybe when I'm actually awake and alert I can take care of these things, but right now what I need most is to rest.
posted 2005/01/10 at 21:24
Okay, so about halfway through last semester all of the graduate students in English at UT get this e-mail explaining that one of the required courses for the MA won't be offered at all in the 2005-2006 academic year, so if we haven't taken it yet we'll need to take it this semester. Of course I made sure to sign up for it, and I was able to do so without any problems.
Then we all get to class today, and find out that there's a prerequisite for the course that wasn't listed in the course catalogue. Some of the students had already taken the course, but many of us hadn't. I re-checked the catalogue and the prerequisite wasn't listed, and the university's online registration tool should have caught that and not allowed any of us to register in the first place.
So I just dropped the course and replaced it with a new one. However, there is a big inconvenience in all of this, which is that now there is pretty much no way I can get my MA in two years like I planned. Given that my assistantship only goes for two years, this means that either I'm going to have to find a way to raise money for that extra semester (perhaps UT will hire me as a lecturer after the two years), or I may be royally screwed here.
There are other minor inconveniences, too. For example, the new class I'm enrolled in meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which shoots down the old arrangement I had where I only had classes on Mondays and Wednesdays. Also, this is the first semester where first week add/drops cost money, so the University's going to get fifty more bucks from me at a time when my cashflow situation is really tight. And since I won't be able to do yoga in the mornings on Thursday like I'd hoped (with every other Wednesday now taken up with the BDSM student group I'm trying to start), I may have to take two days in a row off of exercise when I really don't want to do that. Unless I do something like go to campus for class, leave to play DDR (assuming I can get out of office hours on Thursday), shower, and then come back to campus for Spectrum, but that's ... ugh. Look, I didn't get any sleep last night so I'm not really thinking that straight right now, but it looks like things just got really screwed up here, and of course anything that keeps me in Toledo any longer than is absolutely necessary just plain sucks.
posted 2005/01/08 at 21:02
You know, it's strange how I can have this little shit bother me and I come here and make too big a deal out of it, but when the really big shit comes I don't tend to say much of anything. I guess it's because I don't like myself when I'm angry (I mean really angry, and I don't think I've been as angry in my life as I am right now), and I don't want to let you all see what I get like when I'm like that.
In other news, classes start back up Monday. Yay or whatever.
posted 2005/01/04 at 15:38
A couple of Internet ruminations here ...
For some reason, I still visit My Yahoo! every day after I wake up just to quickly scan news headlines, read Doonesbury and all of that fun stuff. I subscribe to one of the NHL news feeds there, and in the wake of the current lockout, there's been an awful lot of filler there. The most absurd, yet the most entertaining, are regular reports on a simulated season being played on EA's NHL 2005 right now. The most annoying are that for some reason, writers for the Colorado Avalanche are somehow able to slip in "Avalanche Moment" columns where they basically reproduce columns written during the Avs' glory days, yet somehow no other team gets this privilege. What's up with that?
I've been looking at my server logs for the past couple of months, and I'm always fascinated by the search terms people use to get here. A lot of people come here in search of Saturday Night Live writer T. Sean Shannon, although most of the searches with my name in them seem to be directed towards me. (Usually they'll include an extra search term like Wildwood.) However, for some reason Jacqui Malouf and Stephanie Birkitt keep showing up on my top ten keyword lists every month. One month "jacqui malouf's ass" was in the top ten, even though I've never written at all about her ass. (I'm sure it's quite a nice ass, but I don't feel particularly compelled to write a lot about it.)
posted 2005/01/03 at 23:34
Next semester starts a week from today, so I went and registered for my classes today. The good news is that I'll only have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays this semester. The bad news is that I'm going to be driving between campuses again like a couple of autumns ago, only this time I have twenty minutes to make the trip, not forty. Oh, and I still have to go to campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays for my assistantship, and every other Friday to get my paycheque.
With one week left to go in this break, I'm only now realizing how little I've gotten done here. I must be insane, but I think I actually prefer the more regular regimen that being in classes provides. Pfft.
posted 2005/01/02 at 17:45
Given all the injuries the Bengals suffered through this year, and given that Carson Palmer hadn't taken a regular season snap at all until Game 1, I think I can live with 8-8. Palmer will need another year to really get into the pro flow, but after that -- provided the front office can get some freaking defence on this team -- I think the Bengals could be a strong playoff contender in the AFC. Seriously.
Yesterday I went down to Bowling Green because I just felt like playing DDR there, but when I got there both the places to play were closed. Sigh. I was thinking about heading up to Ann Arbor for DDR tonight -- the place there is open until two in the morning every day -- but I guess I'm just feeling exceptionally lazy now for some reason. Again, sigh.
posted 2005/01/01 at 22:24
So this is 2005. Smells a lot like the suckage of 2004.
I decided I wanted to head to Bowling Green to play DDR tonight. The only problem with that was that when I got there, both the places that have DDR were closed. Normally I would have just headed up to my usual place afterwards, but I got roped into cooking dinner for the family tonight so I had to come home early for that. (At least Mark likes my vegetarian pizzas; in addition to my usual veggie pepperoni pizza, I also made a vegetarian bacon cheeseburger pizza and he really ate that up.) It's been an hour since dinner, but I've been on Chessmaster since dinner and, well, I kind of don't want to stop. I guess chess was something that I let drop from my life for too long.
Anyway, I'm hoping things turn out better this year for me. I'm really thinking that starting a BDSM student group this coming semester will help me channel some energies that I haven't been able to really channel for a while now. That, and hopefully I can find someone in the group to share my Saturday nights with instead of staying here at the house playing chess and DDR.
For those of you who don't check the diet log on a regular basis, I'm about to buy a paid LiveJournal account so I'll be making some design changes over there (now I can finally get a decent colour scheme over there) as well as some changes to my eating patterns. That, plus ... *sigh* ... I HATE YOU JOE PETROW, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!!! (No, I don't really hate you, but it's easier to blame you than blame myself for what the nasty little surprise I got this morning. That'll be posted to the diet log soon enough, though.)
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon