greatdekutree85 ?

( Work drama.  )

So basically I am tired of being paid less to do a job that is more difficult than my last one, where the procedure changes every other week, where I need 16 passwords and a manager's approval just to reprint a bill, and where the manager is unbelievably rude to me all the time.

Yesterday, on a whim, I applied for a writing internship with a small company in Toronto that makes casual computer games, and scored an interview.  Now all I've got to do is scrape together a portfolio of my writing for next week. :D

The internship is unpaid, but at least my travel expenses will be covered.  Plus, there is a chance that this could turn into a full-time position at the end.  It's a great chance to get some good experience and hopefully get a toe into the gaming industry. It's also close to school, so now I can put all my energy in one place and not worry about travelling back and forth.  Pretty cool.

Finally got some assignments back from this philosophy-oriented class I got stuck in this year.

Most of my marks are pretty solid, except for this one glaring C+ (fortunately only worth 5%).  In an assessment of Descartes' method of reasoning well, I wrote that his methods are not practical, because they are difficult to implement in the real world.  The prof put quotes around the words "practical" and "real world" and called them vague statements. 

Meanwhile, a bunch of word-vomit I produced at 3AM and have very little recollection of writing got an A.  I'm not even joking when I say I gossiped about boys in the middle.  She even put a little arrow next to the part about boys and wrote "no kidding!"

Ahhhh academia.

Today on my way home from my morning workshop, a girl stopped me on the road.  She said she needed help, and asked if I could walk her to the Ross building.

( Even more proof that I am the slowest person on earth. )  

In other news, new almost!bf and I are still seeing each other and I'm extremely pleased thus far. He may be coming to my parents' house sometime soon, and I'm a little worried because my mom is seriously chomping at the bit to meet him. (In otherwords, gearing up to do or say something embarrassing.) On the plus side, she will probably bake a lot so that she has an excuse to come downstairs and ply him for information. 

My dad is generally apathetic about the whole thing, but he was disappointed that new bf didn't come over when uncle Dave was staying at our house.  He wanted my mom to hide upstairs so that he could try to convince the poor guy that Dave is my other father and we are a progressive family.  (He insists that this is for my benefit, so I can gauge his reaction and make sure he's not too conservative for me or something.)  I love my dad.

That is the sound of a Mary Poppins carpet bag.  Today I was at work, and it occured to me that I have one. Got a sore throat?  I got stuff for that.  Got a headache?  I got stuff for that.  Want gum?  Candy? Tissues? A spare pen? A magazine?  A  lamp?

Seriously, I'm turning into office-mom. Very disconcerting.

Going  to Playdium this evening!!! :D

I'm actually so excited.  I didn't get this excited when I was little.  

Happy New Year all y'all!

I had all these party options for New Years this year... but yesterday afternoon I got on the phone with one of my highschool bffs and I found out she had no plans whatsoever.  So I dropped everything to bake cookies and make daquiris at her house.  We also watched a movie, because we are wild and crazy like that.

I regret nothing!

( Angry angry university rant. )

Anyways. I've finished the 20 page exam of doom, so I have time for recreational-internet-surfing again. It's just Christmas shopping, Dragon Age and part-time work for the next two weeks. ^_^

I'm really excited about next semester because i have Thursdays off school, and I don't plan on telling my boss. I'm going to have days off again. This is AMAZING.

A big hug to everyone I missed over the last couple of weeks. It seems to be crisis-time on my f-list, and I'm really sorry that I haven't been commenting lately.

So.... any idea what I can get my mom for Christmas this year? I'm totally stumped. She doesn't like spa stuff, or flowers. She works in a chocolate factory so, yeah, edible gifts are a no-go. She isn't a big fan of eating in restaurants. Dad already has the jewellery angle covered. She likes interior design and she's interested in... real estate. (She's got a car scraper and string on her list. No joke.)

Can anyone think of something cool I could do to surprise her? What do you give a woman with NO HOBBIES?

I can't believe how long it has been since I updated.  I am an irresponsible livejournaler. 

( A funny/sad story drove me to post today.  )  

My German relatives have been staying with us for the past couple of weeks.  Don't get me wrong, their two boys are really cute most of the time, but I'm getting pretty sick of having them in the house.  The kids always start yelling as making noise right outside my door around 8 in the morning, (I work nights) they won't eat anything so all our meals are bland-ified to suit their needs, and I can't communicate with them because I don't know much German and they don't know much English.

It wouldn't be so bad, but my parents have decided that the best way to keep them entertained is to let them stay in the basement where they can play with my video games...   which basically means that I don't get to play with my own toys for two weeks.  I have a lot of old, delicate equipment downstairs, and I don't have warranties for any of my games either, so if they scratch something, I'm sunk.  I've hidden some of the more valuable items, but it's still stressing me out.  (These kids have a reputation for being destructive.  It's not just me being paranoid.)

I can't even count the number of times I've been called in to "fix something."  I don't really know what is so complicated about connecting a Gamecube to a TV, but apparently I'm the only person in the house who can handle it.  The children keep pressing random buttons and messing up the satellite, the Xbox keeps red-ringing... and it all seems to happen while I'm trying to get ready for work too. 

I'm pretty tired and frustrated, and this is just the first wave.  More people are coming to stay on Friday.

To their credit, however, the kids are awfully cute.  It's so funny too because they keep talking about Chuck Norris in German.  "Blah blah blah Chuck Norris blah blah blah roundhouse kick!"   

 
( Weekend )  

I was in a really good mood when I got home, and when I logged onto the internet I found an email from Disturbo for this.  It was kind of the cherry on top.

We'll see if my luck holds tomorrow.  A potential employer has agreed to call me about a part-time job.  

  

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In other news, a friend of mine just made like $5000 writing harlequin romance novellas and has offered to hook me up.  I'm ashamed to say that I'm considering it very seriously.  This could be the start of something completely hilarious.

Sad news:  a boy from my residence was found dead yesterday. 

I saw his missing posters go up a few days before I moved out, but I guess I didn't believe anything bad would happen until now.  At first I had the impression that it occured close to home, but it turns out that he was off-campus when it happened.  They found the body in lake Ontario, and it sounds like there was alcohol involved.  

I didn't know really know him, but I'd seen him around once or twice and it's a little weird to think about what happened.  A kid from my old highschool died pretty much the exact same way.  

What a stupid waste of life.  Right before grad too.   

I moved out yesterday and I think I had a successful job interview over the phone.  All that's left is to unpack and then I'm totally free of responsibilities for at least a week.  :D 

Today was spent taking advantage of Doors Open Toronto, which was a nice way to end my stay in the city.  A lot of the events were over crowded, (The Don Jail already had a 3 hour line up by 10 a.m.) but we still managed to get a look at several historic buildings. 

The most entertaining place to visit was, by far, Coach House Press at U of T, since the tour offered demonstrations of how all the machines worked and everyone got to make prints with an old VanderPress.  They had some really old equipment, including a linotype machine that makes lead slugs of raised text to use in letter pressing.  (Sadly, it wasn't in opperation, because they didn't want a vat of molten lead boiling in the building all day.) 

They also had Heidelbergs; a type of printing press from the 60s that still gets used today, but only prints one colour at a time.  The heidelbergs were neat because you could make full-colour images if you ran the same sheet of paper through the press four times, adding an additional layer of colour (magenta, yellow, etc.) each time.  I always had a vague idea of how my computer printer mixes colours, but it was cool to see the whole process slowed down like that. 

Yes, I know I'm a nerd.  But it gave me a visual frame of reference for some stuff that I get lectured on at school all the time. It will probably help me out next year if I decide to take book-making. :D

Um.

The new Star Trek movie wasn't even on my radar, but I went to see it last night and it was pretty fabulous.  I guess I should have been more confident when I heard that Leonard Nimoy was involved in promoting it.  He went through the whole "I am not Spock" thing, so the fact that he seems enthusiastic about this movie says a lot.  

I used to watch Star Trek with my mom, so the movie really took me back to my childhood.  It was totally campy, but a good, self-aware, hilarious sort of campy. 

5 stars, Mr. Abrams!

Title: Dehumanization
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Summary: Anna's escape from the Human Ranch, and the events that follow. Set prior to the first game, contains spoilers.

 

( From chapter 5 )

 

Title: Dehumanization
Fandom: Tales of Symphonia
Summary: Anna's escape from the Human Ranch, and the events that follow. Set prior to the first game, contains spoilers.

( From chapter 4 )

Recently I was working on a science writing assignment, and I decided to do some research about the science of attraction.  I found this really interesting book called Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? and I also discovered a bunch of news articles on BBC's website and  The Economist. (Of all things.)

I decided to focus on smells.  It's weird, but cool.  At least I think so.
( I swear, next time I meet a guy I'm sniffing through his diry laundry just to see if this is true. )

I also found some pretty interesting, but unrelated facts. 

1) People in love subconciously look away from pretty faces.

2) Most men with blue eyes prefer women with blue eyes, but guys with other eye types have varied preferences.  (Theoretically, light eyed guys might like light eyed girls best because they subconciously want to pass on their eye colour to their children.)

3) When men were asked to rank pictures of women against different coloured backgrounds, they found women more attractive when they were surrounded by red, as opposed to cool colours like blue.  They also liked women wearing red. 

4) Women look and feel sexier when they're ovulating. 

IDK, I thought it was neat.