Feeling :  annoyed  Listening :  N/A  Reading :  A TON of books. :)

Happy birthday Corinne!

In case you didn’t know, I got back into fanlistings. I just opened 3: Victoria Asher, Ghosts, and Revolution in Me. I also just got approved for Stephen Campbell Moore, and I applied to adopt a few as well. I doubt I’ll get the adoptions, since I’m technically “new” to fanlistings. But let’s hope! *crosses fingers*

So what’s on my drama plate today? rofl.

I got a call this morning from the registrar’s office at school. “We got your fax and we need to refer your call to the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences to check on the status of your prerequisite block override forms for such and such classes.” They gave me a phone number to call, so I called it.

In case you were wondering, I managed to get off of financial hold, because I finished paying my fees for last semester with my last paycheck. \m/ I added two classes to my fall schedule: Outlaw Genres and US Foreign Relations I. I need 12 credits to be a full-time student, which would be 4 classes.

Since this is my first and last year at school, I decided I needed a little help financially and applied for FAFSA. I checked to see if my money had been awarded, but they’re saying I need to sign paperwork in order to determine my eligibility. No problem. Since I was financial hold for so long, they probably thought I wasn’t even gonna come back. And signing paperwork? Pfft. I’m a corporate drone; I know ALL about signing paperwork. rofl.

I only really need 3 more upper division English classes to finish on time. They just so happen to be offering them: Fundamentals of Business Writing and Comparative Literature (and Outlaw Genres). The system wouldn’t let me add them though. It said I didn’t meet the prerequisites. Bullcrap. I took the prereq class at another school under a different name, and ran into this problem last semester. So I filled out the paperwork and got the call from the office.

When I called the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the lady I spoke to (who needs to work on her customer service tone, geez) said that they were in the process of checking my paperwork and would have an answer for me by the end of the week.

I asked her why, since they processed my last prereq block override form in no time flat. She explained that they were moving the department to our shiny new Liberal Arts and Sciences building. That’s the reason why I have to wait until the end of this week to get confirmation on whether or not those classes can be added to my schedule.

This is SO unnerving. School starts at the end of the month already! But I just have to remind myself that a few days wait isn’t so bad. Ugh, ugh!

ETA (August 6): I logged into my Student Account just now… and they added the 2 classes I need! Yay! Now I have to hot foot it down to my financial aid office on my day off next week and sign whatever paperwork I need to sign so I can get some help ’cause ooh boy, I need it. They also processed the check I sent them for graduation in the spring too. I knew everything would work out! 1 more semester. Meep. I need Community-Based Learning Capstone, Historical Investigation and Senior Seminar. And French 4, but I’m taking that at another school. As soon as I use what I need for this semester, I’m gonna use whatever’s left over for French 4. YES. \m/

Today was a good day though. Me and my niece C picked up her friend N at noon or so, and we all went to do errands. N had to be home by 3, although we failed at that. If I had known the night before that N needed to be home by 3, we would have left much earlier. Anyways, they came with me to get my oil changed and my smog check done. Then we went to Caesar’s Palace to take pictures. We hit up FAO Schwarz and Niketown. That’s all we had time for.

I took my D40 with us, and the pictures came out so well! I’m not gonna post the ones I took with their faces in it, because that’s just wrong. Maybe their feet, but not their faces, rofl. I’ve uploaded the ones I took that they weren’t in to Heaven or Las Vegas. LOL, most of the pictures I took they were all up in ‘em so I don’t have a lot to upload.

I have so much to do tomorrow. It’s crazy. I better eat dinner and go to bed.

?: “Favourite cover song?”

Feeling :  accomplished  Listening :  Go Ahead - Alicia Keys  Reading :  Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Indian in the Cupboard

Why yes, yes I did.

I decided to separate Nothing but Song, right down the middle.

Nothing but Song: main site, strictly content/splash stuff. All the pages that were here? Scooted them over.

3: still my muxtape. Which was updated with songs by Five for this week. That’s funny. I’ve been obsessed with five lately, as you can see by my mixtape (down below).

blog: you’re here! Or reading it, in the very least. It’s strictly a blog now. I felt all the bells and whistles were getting to be a pain. I think it’s because the themes I were finding were so gorgeous, but it just wasn’t very “me” if that makes sense. This theme, which I’ve dubbed “The Fallen” like the Franz Ferdinand song, I just copied the files for the classic theme and then slapped some decent CSS on it to make it purty. I like how it looks. Uber stripped down.

clique: still the same.

creative: still the same.

directory: still the same.

fan: yeah, I decided to get back into fanlistings. I’m approved for 3 now, Victoria Asher, the Ghosts and Revolution in Me albums by Siobhan Donaghy.

heaven: still the same.

ost: still the same.

writing: I’m always opening and closing my writing portfolio. I dunno why. I think it’s because in its previous incarnations, I thought that more was better. But I’ve learned my lesson. Less is better. So whatever pieces I had up on Nothing but Song before, I moved them over to it. I also renamed it “On My Own Time [Write On!]“, because that is my favourite Gym Class Heroes song ever. It’s always spoken to me, lyrics-wise.

I was trying to figure out how to strip down WP admin pages as well. There’s a lot of stuff that I could do without, but I’m not sure how to get rid of it all. I saw a plugin, but then I saw a post that said you can do it without the plugin. Alls I know is I’m confuzzled. So I’m gonna do a bit more research and see what I can do. Because I will always remain loyal to WP. But I wish it was “lighter,” in terms of what I want it to do.

My mom’s in town this week, yay! We went out to dinner at Chili’s. A new one opened up in our ‘hood. And my sister started ragging on everybody again, since that’s what she does when we’re all together like that. Then, when her daughters excused themselves after we ate to use the bathroom my dad politely scolded us for talking about adult things in front of them. I wasn’t the one that started it, but he had a point.

I also made the mistake of telling my sister that our cousin was going to pay me to dog sit this weekend for her since she’s leaving town for a spell. She got extremely offended, and spent the rest of the dinner and the drive home sniping at me about the money. I guess our cousin asked her to do it first, but hadn’t mentioned reimbursement or something. So my Ate said no for whatever reason.

Then our cousin turned around and asked me and offered to pay. I took a day or so to decide, because I wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility. But then I said to myself I could consider it a mini-vacation, since she said I could stay in the house. So I accepted. But my cousin just texted me and said it was OK that I told her.

I’m looking forward to it. Gas is gonna be a pain since my cousin lives on the other side of town, but I don’t mind. It’ll be nice to get out of the house for a few days, even though technically I’ll still be working during the day, and will have to adjust my sleeping schedule because of it. I’m gonna bring my Indiana Jones DVDs, buy some food at Wal-Mart, play with the dogs, and chill. She has the interwebz, so I’ll still be around in that sense.

Anyways, I just wanted to let you know.

?: “What is your favorite thing to do on vacations/holidays?“

Feeling :  cranky  Listening :  Cookie Jar - Gym Class Heroes  Reading :  Claudia and the New Girl

So, even though July 11 was the iPocalypse (and coincidentally, my dad’s 65th birthday), I went ahead and upgraded my first gen iPhone to the 2.0 firmware. It was pretty easy. No muss, no fuss. I’m not keen on upgrading to the 3G just yet. The only difference that I can see is the speed, the phone/data plan prices, and the fact that it’s got GPS on it.

I’m of the school where you run your shit into the ground and when it cannot be repaired, you replace it. I’m going to have this phone until that happens. I will also be doing that with my car, and prolly my computer too. Plus I’ve never been an early adopter of anything. I always wait and salivate over things for months before the madness gets hold of me, and I have to have it. I was like that with my iPods too.

I’m incredibly tickled by the Apps they have for it. Apps completely expand what the iPhone is capable of. Right now, I have AIM, AirMe, BlipSolitaire, BoxOffice, CheckPlease, Facebook, Light, Morocco, MySpace Mobile, PhoneSaber, and RubyRepeat installed. Those are only the free apps. I would prolly go around and buy up the whole store, but alas, I am practicing restraint.

I do have two and a half more terms of school left, ya know.

I will admit, some of the apps (not going to say which) are a bit buggy and slow-loading *coughmyspacecough*, but I look forward to the time when the kinks are all worked out. It’ll be a smooth ride, someday soon I hope. I truly believe that Steve and the crew are working behind the scenes to make it so. The iPhone is definitely on its way to being a one-stop shop for those of us who need to be connected.

Haters to the left! I’m talking to you, Ate M.

Also, I decided to combine Cydonia with my Flickr. The Cydonia subdomain now redirects to my Flickr photostream. I deleted “my greatest hits” on Flickr, and uploaded the pics from Cydonia into it. In addition, AirMe is an app that allows you to post photos via Flickr directly from your iPhone. So I expect to be doing that more often as well.

I’m also going through this bizarro suspense/horror/sci-fi creative phase. This is probably because I’ve spent the last two weeks reading all the episode summaries of the classic Twilight Zone series, haha. As such, I wrote my own little short story spin on the “Static” episode. I think it needs to be tightened up a little, then I’ll get a beta reader. Plus the last few ideas I’ve been struck with have this sci-fi slant to ‘em all. It’s amazing what a creative mind will spew out sometimes.

Speaking of “Twilight,” I finished “Eclipse” the other day. It was okay, I guess. I’m sorry, but I still have trouble believing that people like these books. I tried to be open-minded, I really did, but reading the series as a whole was like reading a teenage girl’s fanfiction. The dialogue, the situations, the tone, everything felt very juvenile.

I understand that the books are meant for a young adult audience, but you don’t have to sound like them to get them to like your books. It’s a very sad realization to me when books like “Twilight” are acceptable reads for anybody. It kind of lowers the bar, being a writer myself. Unpublished, yes, but if writing like Stephenie Meyer is going to get my things published, I’ll keep them to myself, thanks.

The Cullens are fascinating characters though. I look forward to “Midnight Sun” only because it’s from Edward’s point of view, though I am not keen on revisiting “Twilight” again in that sense. By that premise alone, I’m sure that book will be nothing more than fanservice. SMeyer needs to branch out a bit. Also, Jacob should get his own series or something. I think he really grew on me in “Eclipse.” I didn’t like him so much in “New Moon,” but I definitely grew to like him in “Eclipse.” He’s a misunderstood boy who deserves to be explored further.

Also, I’m thinking about upgrading my account at LibraryThing. You’re only allowed to catalogue 200 books. But if you upgrade to a one-time lifetime membership, you can catalogue as many as you’d like. Now that I’m investing in my book collection again, I think both a lifetime membership and a CueCat would make my life complete.

It’s the little things that make me happy.

My sister-in-law is due with the newest addition to our family (a girl they’re gonna name Michaela Gemini) in September. I wish I could go to her baby shower; it’s the first weekend of August. But I don’t think I could ask for vacation this short of notice. Plus I don’t think I have any money. I had to spend some of my savings to help my parents out. Mind you, it wasn’t a huge amount, and helping my parents out is the least I can do, but still. I want to use that money for my own plans, you know. *le sigh* I’m gonna save up and get some things on their registries, so I don’t look like a shitty ninang, rofl.

And hey, I finally found 43 things I want to accomplish in my life. Yay!

?: “Is it just me or does everybody in the world seem to be pregnant?“