goodbye to sbc

so sbc is no more. if you ever had my land line, don't call it. it's going goodbye as of monday midnight. that's it. no more.

and do you know, it takes a person longer to cancel phone service than to sign up [with all the filling in of blanks and waiting that that entails] for it. lots of 'i understand ma'am, but let me just say' phrases, and 'i'd recommend at least keeping the single line' suggestions. hello, dear operator. i have only the one line, and that's the one i'm interested in canceling. thanks. and i don't use it.

i don't call from it... ever. i only receive calls from telemarketers and fundraisers. oh, and government transportation people asking me how long it takes me to get to work, and how many streetlights i go through, and who is in the car with me, and whatever else. in short, things i'd rather not deal with.

since i'm never here, when people ask me what number they can use to reach me i give them the cell. and let's be honest. almost no one ever calls me anyway. now if i *ever* received calls on that line from people i want to talk to, this wouldn't be happening. but not one call on that line since i moved here. it's been well nigh a semester. i'm finished. i'm discarding the line.

i have tried to cut it back to the basic. i have. and it cost me a whopping 75 dollars to get a cheaper line. [WTF is THAT?] sort of defeats the purpose, right? so this dear lady offers to reduce the line. i've been through this with these people. there's no way i'm signing up for a 6 dollar a month phone service and then paying a year's worth of it on a single bill just because i changed the service. no thanks, my friend.

and i doubt there is a lower phone plan out there for me from this company anyway. i've searched. i found on for '4-9' dollars online, and tried to get it. it turns into 15 dollars a month. yeah, i know. that's peanuts to some people's phone bills. 15 dollars. i should be so lucky. shut up. the people who have bills like that actually get phone calls. they use the phone. they're using what they pay for. i'm paying for something i never use.

so. the dear lady offers to lower the bill by reducing my phone service. i tell her to go ahead and try. if she can hit the 6 dollar range, she's got me. bit it has to stay in the 6 dollar range, and not be lower for a whole six months. she does a double take when she sees that my current setup is the absolute lowest option they offer.

next, the scare tactics. i may be incapacitated and unable to speak, and my cell phone will not tell the 911 folks where i am. okay. she's got a point. and it's a point i've considered. i may need to make a call and my phone could be uncharged and my electricity out. another point that i've considered. and if they can offer me a pay-per use land line that only makes calls out and never receives them and that costs me nothing unless i make a call, well then, keep talking. i'll pay a whole 20 dollars a call if i'm only paying for the call. But paying for a phone that sits like a lump until i receive a call from the police department trying to guilt me into paying for a truckload of teddy bears? no thanks, ma'am.

i think that got through. at the very least, her voice became fast-paced and high-pitched as she told me all the fine print involved in canceling a line. we thanked each other and that was that.



in other news, the fuse my heater is on flipped itself off in the middle of the night, and my sleepless mind couldn't figure it out until noon today. i'd have called the office, but they're closed on saturdays. well, the heat is on again, and my feet have thawed out. fingers still have some residual stiffness to them, but they're on their way.

conclusion: gremlins.



have turned in the final-that-ought-not-ever-to-have-been-assigned. and asked for information for the fourth time. polite and squeaky is taking a while this time, sr.

now i've another final to do by monday, but i'm hoping to write it today and turn it in tonight. i have to work on monday, and so will be unable to work on it then. it's got to be in sunday at the latest. i also work tuesday and wednesday, so i would like to be able to spend the better part of sunday working on the paper due wednesday, even though i have monday and tuesday night to devote to it as well.



and now i'm off. i slept some last night[?], but was too cold to really enjoy my time. i'm all for a nap now and final-writing after dinner hour.

love and peace

day of the graduate zombies

so. i forgot to blog when i got home ... whenever that was. so much for a diary of this, right?

to begin with, it used to be "dead day". thus the title. it is, sadly, no longer dead day.

okay, well i am going to just recap what i think has happened in the gaping hole between now and the last post. then i'm going to outline what i hope to accomplish, rant a bit about a class, crow a bit about a different class, and discuss the virtues of doilies. if you don't decide to back out now, you're in for a ride.

after going home, i slept for a few hours and woke up an hour later than i wanted to. i began writing furiously, because the paper i was working on was due at noon due to my stupid optimism. what? rehkmira was optimistic? yep. see where it gets you? [i'm all for optimism, but the saying is something like "shoot low and hit high" and not "shoot high and crawl in however possible", right? "underpromise and overdeliver" and not "promise the moon and hand in a frog." whatever]

at a quarter to noon, i had about a page and half left. [hangs head] i emailed to say i was running a bit late, and emailed the whole mess in around two. at which point, it became necessary for me to undress for the first time in far too long and drag myself off to the shower. i nearly fell asleep in there, and it was therefore good that i didn't opt for a bath.

i assembled all my notes on butterflies in the book for the mini report, and stared at the computer for an unhealthy number of hours.

i remember sleeping. in my bed. wearing pajamas. i also remember waking up and packing my backpack. i know for a fact that i finished the short paper that was due on wednesday, because i handed it in at the prof's house during our end-of-class dinner. he has some really nice cats [friendly and fat] and a german shepherd. lovely dog. reminded me of the old home in ca.

what i don't know is where the cake came from. well, i know i baked it. what makes it odd is that i don't remember baking it, or doing the dishes from that baking. yet when i packed up for school [there was an end-of-semester lunch for all that i had at some distant time agreed to bake for], there in the bottom of my fridge were two cakes ready to be bagged and brought up to campus. and the dish strainer had the mixing bowls, measuring cups, wisk, and beaters in it, dry as the day they were bought.

conclusion: gremlins.

anyway, it is now time for me to gripe about this one class for which i am [not] writing currently. this class has had three oral reports. three small papers. various in class exercises. a ginormous final project. and the prof still has a final. a final longer than the term project. can you hear the screaming? that's the sound of [number obscurred to protect the innocent blogger] grad students raving.

i am upset by this, and have been since semester's beginning, but i think i, and the others, were entertaining the delusional thoughts that this prof would come to his senses. we all know why that's not happening... because it's completely normal and sensible to have a final longer than the term project, and to give students three days to write it.

now i need to praise a course. i got the grade in already for the paper i was writing for the allnighterdiary. a 95. i'm not sure how that happened, to be honest. i don't feel it deserved so high a grade. it was thorough, i'll give you that; but it lacked research, and for a term project to lack research is a bad thing. but there you have it. just a final left for that class [which final is *not* longer than the term project]. i'm happy with this class, and the third one. would never have signed up for the first one, though.

now that i have a doily recipe that's both pretty and enjoyable, expect to get a lot of doilies for gifts, folks. at least, if i judge you to be the doily type. my brother will obviously not be getting a doily, no matter how manly the colors. i've not yet finished my first doily, but i've got it about a third of the way knitted, and it looks ... busy, but that's because of the varigated yarn. it's kind of pretty. i'm glad i found a pattern that i can handle on a] the kind of time i've got to work with, b] the kind of wrist movements i can make repeatedly, and c] the kind of yarn i can afford to buy. it helps also that this doily not knitted from the middle.

ems, i'll send you photos.

and my new motto: "i think never is enough" from some band whose music i'm listening to right now. they wrote the "its been X days since..." song also. i can't be bothered to look them up right now. [and "the pleasures of insomnia are something i can't avoid" with is sadly the state of my life...]

but since never can only start being enough *after* all these things are turned in, i need to stop this and get to that. two finals and a final paper left to go. yeah. these are things that can be done. really.

i figure this 8am meeting tomorrow is ... i very much want to not show up to it. i mean, really. i'm just a fly on their wall anyway. what does it matter if i'm an absent fly? sigh. i'll just be a glazed-over fly tomorrowday.

still got to write two more prompts before i'm allowed to visit my blankets tonight.

nitey-night!