Anger!

So I have a contingency plan. Even if I am successful, I worry that getting the marking system for my Francais course so that it's fair (with the intervention of the administration, as that's what's required) would be a logistical nightmare. The retroactive changes would require that all assignments be recollected and remarked, and some of them have been torn up and thrown out because the unfair grading system turned their 70% assignment into a 0%. I worry that the marks wouldn't be fairly altered across the board. Really, the students aren't obligated to keep their assignments just in case somebody proves that the prof is being a jerk (though he is a perfectly good guy, otherwise--I have no problem with him as a person or as a teacher, just as a marker).

My contingency plan is thus: withdraw from the course; the deadline for doing so with a grade of W is March 14th--I just checked. Then take some other language in the Spring/Summer terms. Not French, because that would require a placement test, and, also, I'm currently bitter. You know, for a place that's desperate for students, Faculte Saint-Jean hasn't been very good to me. I took a course there in first year and hated it so much that I changed my minor. At least I passed that course (though only with a 5 on the stay-9 scale). (*huff* I'm upset right now and am therefore making many typos. Excuse me if I don't catch them all.) And now with this marking insanity that probably has my grade at around a 20%, I am further annoyed with the place.

Maybe I'll take Spanish. It'd be fairly easy for me, plus it would be useful to be able to say something other than "Tengo fria," especially if I wind up living someplace warm come the fall.

The biggest problem, I think, will be convincing my parents. I think they'll be more ok with it when they realize I'll be done school only about two months later than expected, but the paying for two more courses worth of tuition may not go over so well.

I need to calm down. I going to go make some tea, maybe, or do some breathing exercises. I just saw my GP this morning, and she suggested that I get physiotherapy on my neck and shoulders to see if it helps with my migranes. I just can't imagine why I would be tense, though!

*seeths some more*

Thursday Night

I feel very odd right now. I've had a migrane for a few days, and I feel kind of dizzy and nauseated, and I can hear a sound like shifting sand in my ear. Luckily, I've taken thousands of milligrams of Advil today, and nothing actually hurts. I didn't eat dinner until just now, and I hadn't realized how hungry I was--I feel much better than I did half an hour ago. But, yeah, these things can be remarkably debilitating. I made a doctor's appointment for Monday to get a new kind of medication, since the Cafergot isn't working for me in the least anymore.

It is Reading Week. This makes me happy and well-rested. I have been keeping busy, of course, what with going to my grandfather's funeral this past weekend. Winnipeg was bloody cold, but I guess that goes without saying in February. There were fewer people than at my grandmother's funeral, but it was still well-attended. Everybody cried. I bought Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? at the bookstore in the airport on the way out, and I guess I should finish it. It's a very easy read. I brought my copy of Blink with me to read, originally, but I really wanted fiction. I described Blink to my mom and Kathy (who came to Winnipeg with us), and they both declared that it sounded like something they couldn't ever be interested in. They laughed.

I was using Netscape on my parents' computer earlier today, since nobody's bothered to download Firefox, and it prompted me to download an update. That seemed weird to me--I thought AOL put Netscape to bed?

Joanne will be arriving in Edmonton in a few days. This calls for socializing!

Yummy thing I discovered today: Easy Mac with BBQ sauce. Mmmm...

Reasons Why I Want to go Back to Bed Right Now

1) I'm tired. I had a busy weekend, then only got 4 hours of sleep on Sunday night. Last night was better, but not enough. Plus, I feel like I should stock up on sleep, since I don't think I'm going to get huge amounts over the rest of the week.

2) The Edmonton Journal has a "Venting" section three times a week. Today, somebody said the following: "You cannot claim there is evidence of climate change without first documenting long-term changes in average temperature. Hotter temperatures in summer and colder temperatures in winter average out to zero over time." There is no typable emoticon for what this makes me feel.

3) I e-mailed that Venting bit to Peter earlier today, and so I pulled up the sent e-mail in IE (not the browser I'm using for Blogger) to copy and paste the quotation so that I wouldn't have to go upstairs and get the newspaper again. After I finished with Hotmail, I signed out and tried to close the browser. It kind of hiccoughed, and when I clicked to try to close it again, I wound up closing both it and the browser with my blog post. Thank God for autosave, but it was like one extra little kick from the world.

4) I got a letter from the ATA telling me that I need to renew my membership, and this only served to remind me that I have no idea what my future in teaching (or in most anything) will be.

5) I got an e-mail from a woman with the Faculty of Arts telling me I sent them my convocation information by mistake and that I need to talk to the Faculty of Education. This was a personalized e-mail. Also? No, *Beartracks* sent you my convocation information because my BMus is through your faculty, even though the Faculty of Education handles most of the processing because it's the faculty I'm currnently enrolled in. Also, yes I talked to them--like Beratracks told me to. *headdesk*

Blah

So shortly after I wrote my last post, my grandfather died. *sad* The funeral will be in a week and a half--instead of his 93rd birthday party. My mom wrote a eulogy while waiting for the window repair people to show up this morning.

Also, I totally forgot about my tech rehearsal with my Directing prof today at noon. I feel horrible, and have been self-medicating with sedatives, chocolate and Diet Coke with Lime. I fully expect to get an earful tomorrow morning during class, every bit of which I quite deserve.

Marilyn just stopped by to talk to me. Among other things, she showed me a book titled "How to Listen to Modern Music (Without Earplugs)." She turned to an excerpt of Xenakis' writing on linear polyphony, which was under the heading "Not a Clue [What This is Talkin About]." This made me laugh. Or, well, it made me kind of want to laugh. Marilyn seems to me to be one of those people who descend upon the world and get absorbed into the gushy outer layer and stay there. Did I mention the sedatives? It's time for Concert Band...

Post #368

So I'm uploading my "profile pic" again because it seems to have disappeared, and I need a place from which to link it. So it gets to be shown off again.

It is Tuesday, and I feel quite chill, but I'm teetering precariously, liable to fall into boredom. Luckily for me, I have class in about an hour and 20 minutes, so I'll be leaving in about 50 minutes--much less time to fill than I could be facing. Then I'll get to drive through conditions less snowy and cold than the previous week, on my way to 455, where I expect I'll spend a fair amount of time looking at Bashaw like I don't quite know what he's asking us. I quite like the course, but being guided through analyses is a rather mind-bending process, with things seeming far too simple to be so complex. Or far too complex to be so simple--either way.

Life lately has been good. My weekend went all right, although I did get a message from my mom on Saturday night saying that my grandfather had taken a turn for the worse and she was flying out to Winnipeg Sunday morning. She got back last night, and said that my grandfather improved quite a bit while she and her sisters were there, but she doesn't expect that to last in their absence. The whole deal gave her an excima breakout, and, no, I don't feel like looking up how to spell that right now. We thought my grandfather was going to die last summer, and he's been doing badly for a while now, so this is hardly a surprise, but it's still very much in the category of not good.

I'm going to the birthday party of an old friend on Saturday. I don't know how many of you have heard about Natalie, but I knew her in junior high school before she started homeschooling. Well, I knew her after that, too, but by halfway through high school we'd mostly lost touch. However, we have gotten back in touch with each other through the magic of Facebook, and I'm actually quite looking forward to seeing her again. She seems very different than she was as a teenager. I suppose most of us are in many ways, but Natalie was always shy and not so fond of being around a lot of people, and that especially seems to have changed. I hope she doesn't still think of me as a blunt, opinionated 14-year-old. ^_^ Being blunt and opinionated isn't really good when you're also quite young and know very little about how the world works. ^_^

I wish my Theory course was one where I could take my computer so that I could have a distraction during the awkward silences when nobody answers Bashaw's questions. None of my classes are condusive to bringing computers, since I don't think any of them have more than 15 students in them, with the exception of Concert Band. It's hard to play solitaire or surf the web in such a small class, especially when there's *still* no wireless in FAB. Grrr...

Late Long

It is just past midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning. Tomorrow/today/Friday will be a long day. Today has been moderate. There were three unpleasant parts to today, a great deal of stuff about which I am apathetic, and one instance of laughing so hard I cried. I should go to bed. I want to finish my Ginger Ale first, though. Tasty. You know, I am uncertain what to think of some people. Today, I witnessed a kind of mini-rebellion. It was unpleasant incident number three. The headache I had during unpleasant incident number one seems to be making a comeback. I had a different headache during unpleasant incident number two, oddly enough. And now I must sneeze. Or not. Why, nose? Why? I found myself confused by the phrase "He never used to" today. I was certain that "used" was the wrong word. It seemed odd that that "yuzed" and "yoos'd" would actually be the same word. What exactly was being "yuzed" in the phrase "He never 'yoos'd' to?" See, this is why I should get more sleep. The muscles around my xyphoid are twitching. I don't know if those are considered abdominal muscles or intercostal muscles. Are all of the intercostal muscles skeletal? Shut up, 'Nita.