A not bad weekend, with on and off weather — and warm warm water (68!). We left a day earlier than planned because the weather appeared to be getting more off than on, because my sister was being irritating, and because I was, yet again, sick. All summer long. I have no idea why I’m sick all the time, but it would really be okay if I weren’t anymore.
Today I will either work or sleep, or perhaps a bit of both.
My standard 6-7 hour drive to Canada City from Dullness took me just under 10 hours. 10 hours. Sitting in a car, with M sitting on my shoulder half the time. Most fun when I could no longer get NPR.
Then, when I finally got back to Canada City — off we go, for a 5 hour drive (that took, thankfully, 5 hours — and that I didn’t have to drive any of) to the beach.
Where it’s pouring.
My weekend beaching was almost cancelled, since it’s supposed to rain all day every day. Now it might not rain — plus, the water temp has gone from 54 to 61. Success! Beach!
Of course I need to clean up my room enough that my landlord can start showing it to people. I wanted to start packing, but no. I figure that the best I can do is to put all the clothes I don’t wear into bags and bring them home. Also, probably, put all the shoes I won’t need until Sept into a bag. It’s a start.
Tomorrow I will drive home, hoping to le– shit. I was planning to leave at 8, but there’s no way I can, because I’ll get stuck in atrocious rush hour traffic. Good thing I thought of that; I’ll leave at 7. Anyways, that means I’ll be home by 2, say, and we’ll leave shortly thereafter, another 5 hour drive. It will be a car-filled day. But worth it: beach!
More course conflicts. My advisor suggests only taking 3 contentful courses. Well, okay. Except there are 4 I want to take, and I don’t know how to decide. Sure, I’ll go to the first week of each of them, but that will almost certainly still result in my being interested in all 4. It would be possible, I think, if not all 4 had a paper due the last day of exams. But they do.
A, who is a year ahead of me, did that — took 4 contentful courses — in his first semester of his second year and he did fine and he passed his paper. And I know I was bored, last year, with not enough to do. And I’ll certainly be able to take any cogsci courses I want (if I want to) after, if I only have 1 or 2 classes left after next semester.
Oh ewll. I registered for them all. I can change one into research credits in September. And I paid my fees (told them to take it out of my stipend). It’s amazing. Stipends don’t go up, but the fees went up over 10%. Where do most people get the money?
This post over at Household Opera made me laugh.
I was talking about course comments with an advisor at Canada U, and she shared with me one of the most unusual comments she’d ever received: Why do they always wear such tight jeans?
It remains unclear who they refers to.
I’ll know very soon if any of my friends are reading this, because that story has become legend, due mostly to the two people who were teaching the course when it received that comment. And, no, they don’t wear tight jeans.
But! Another professor at Canada U — J — does. Every day, tight jeans. And then suddenly he stopped, he was wearing loose khakis and the like for several weeks. We couldn’t figure out what had changed but we discussed this. (Small department.)
The day we discussed it we were in the student lounge, chatting before J’s class. Two of my friends went off to the classroom where our class with J was to try and do work before class. Of course they didn’t. No, they discussed J’s pants some more.
Maybe S [his wife, another professor in the dept] made him stop wearing them. Maybe he and S are trying to have kids.
And then, suddenly, J walks by, puts his head in to see who’s talking about him, and laughs. He was also wearing tight jeans again that day, and for the rest of the semester.
Well, last day in at work. I’d pretty much finished up on the weekend, I just had to return some library books, send out some mail, make sure I’d remembered everything. It was fast. Easy, too. I had this odd feeling of it being the end of summer camp, though.
I’m feeling not well. But I went to the library and got 5 books, including the new Sharyn McCrumb. I’ve now read 2 of them and am halfway through #3. That’s okay. It’s been a while since I’ve read enough fiction. And I can go again tomorrow, after I go figure out my class schedule and register and, possibly, pay for parking for next year.
Friends of mine have said that course selection should look at these things, in order:
My problem is that (1) is conflicting with (2), and I can’t quite decide what to do. (3) is easy, but sadly does not help differentiate between (1) and (2).
Oh well. I can continue ignoring this until tomorrow at 10:30 and get back to work. As of Monday I was 19 hours behind (in my reckoning; according to them, I’m just fine, so if I don’t make it up I don’t make it up) which means that if I work just under 40 hours a week for the next 4 weeks I’m full. 40 hours! What will I do with that much extra time?
Maybe sleep. With luck tonight I will get to sleep before 2.
So it seems they’ve accepted our request. Time to tell the current landlord we’re planning on moving. Drafted a letter to him, though this will be done in person.
We?ve given this a lot of thought and we realized we can’t live with the people upstairs. There?s too much bad feeling. We feel harassed by them — the police will come only in the evenings, so they play the music for hours during the day, they’re harassing the cats through the windows. The enjoyment of the house comes, in part, from feeling safe: knowing that at any point the music might come on or the door be left open makes it impossible to feel safe.
We realize that it’s our word against theirs and you can’t know the reality of the situation, and we have no hard feelings. But at the same time, we can?t live here with them above us any further, as the situation has deteriorated to the point where we don’t believe a common ground can be found.
The result is that one of us has to leave. So, should they be renewing their lease, we will move. We’re very sorry it has come to this. This is a wonderful place and you’re a great landlord.
Hopefully I’m nearing the last of the posts on this topic.
My roommate and I have decided to just move on that other place we saw. It’s even larger than the place we have now (amazingly), with a proper sized kitchen, a fireplace, and a nice yard. It’s a 3-bedroom, we’d need to find someone else, but that’s fine. They haven’t phoned back yet to say if they’ll give it to us. My rent might even go down, which would be quite nice.
In similar news, I think my grandparents have found a new tenant for their upstairs. They own a duplex and live in the bottom half, and the recent tenants were also loud, but due to the rent bureau there, there is absolutely no way for them to get rid of the tenants (unless a family member wants to move in, or they sell the place). But the people who were there decided to leave, and my grandparents are just being very careful about who they let rent it — hard, because you’re all but required to take the first person who visits the place there.
This means I’ll need to pack up. I was planning on carting some stuff I don’t need home — guess I’ll start on that sooner. Gah. I hate packing. I hate moving. But the guys upstairs are starting to be nasty to my cats through the windows, and that worries me. Not feeling scared at home will be worth moving for.
The apartment situation does not seem to be any better. We’re supposed to call the police — but I don’t want to keep living somewhere I need to phone the police and the landlord day in, day out. (Luckily, the noise regulations where I live are very strict — we shouldn’t be able to hear sounds above 45dB from them, ever, and not over 40 at nights. At its quietest, it’s around 55. So who knows.)
So my roommate (thank god we get along) and I are looking for a new place. We saw one that’s wonderful — but too expensive; we’d need a third person. Huge! With a fireplace! If they want us . . . and if the old place can’t be solved (which would pretty much require the people upstairs leaving; I can’t live thinking that any day might be the day they start blasting their music again) . . .
It’s a measure, I think, of how unhappy I am that this makes me think Oh, obviously I should just quit my program and go home.