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Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue

Apr. 7th, 2008 12:35 pm I'm not sure if I want this back.

It's been a weird experience living for 2 weeks without any easy means of Internet access except my shifts at work.  I thought I would miss so much but my own worry was limited to concerns over urgent e-mails and being able to keep in touch with the professors I work for with all the GWS events coming up this term.

But with Lacie-sitting, I've had fast Web at my fingertips all this weekend and will all this week as well.  Fred and I think we've figured out a way to vanquish the mighty Comcast demons and get access in our apartment sometime soon.  And you know what?  I don't want it.

The past few years my biggest time-waster to the tenth degree (literally) was the Internet.  Random things, cool things, things to read and see and look at that linked to other cool things.  Online stories, comics, news, everything.  Fascinating books I can occasionally put down and hide in the corner under a pillow.  And even the best books don't have 10 sequels in the back cover.

But when I was web-less in the apartment, I got things done.  I went to bed and woke up at reasonable hours.  I wasn't late for the train because I wanted to look at one last thing before I left.  I had to face my loneliness and isolation and unsettled feelings head on instead of subsuming them in some morass of online entertainment.  I felt more awake because my eyes weren't strained from late hours in front of the computer.  I got more knitting done.

And now?  I was up late doing something last night because needing e-mail and access to some research sites for what I was working on somehow led to remembering sites I hadn't checked on since mid-March and getting caught up with all of it.  Never missed them before, but there it was.  And now, RIGHT NOW?  Lacie wants me to throw my ball for the next 20 minutes until I leave for class and I am sitting here typing this out.

I know I need the Internet in my place.  I know I need to keep up to date with my e-mails, class cancellations, and other news (particularly if I get the job I'm interviewing for tomorrow).  I know I'll need to do research, lots of research, for my papers this term- checking references, facts, finding new articles and sources and requesting books online.  I know this.  But I still want a way to shut it all off- to be restricted to dial-up to guarantee that only the most essential things will get done- to have some master setting that I can't undo that will prevent fun things from showing up on Firefox.  Unplugging the ethernet cable doesn't work- I think of something I just have to peek at really quick before I go back to work and 90 minutes later I'm still taking one last peek.

Lacie deserves better.  I deserve better.  All the things I need to get done- for my future, the quality of my current life, my classes, my Fred- deserve better.  So why does it keep sucking me in?

Current Location: Lacie's House
Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: "All the Things She Said" t.A.T.u.

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Feb. 21st, 2008 11:09 pm Chocolate and Change!

Whoo!  Busy day here, which I'm going to try to regurgitate quickly because it's going to be a VERY busy night.

Lacie dog actually let me sleep in until 9-something which felt very, VERY good.  Internet at her house was being icky so there is a mostly-finished e-mail to my auntie waiting to go through because I was fixing the network instead of finishing it before chapel this morning.
Chapel THIS week went just peachy and the speaker was fascinating, she's the key-note speaker in the article I'll post later on.
My friend Brittany (bridesmaid #2) went with me to the print shop to pick up the flyers for an art showing to "celebrate the lives of women in art and history" that's next week (have I mentioned that I have a cool job?) and we talked about deep, important stuff.  Like sex.  Mostly, though, about high school and mopey times and trying to be warm and encouraging because she's going to her grandpa's visitation (funeral? not sure which) tomorrow.









So it'll be a long night for me tonight (I have a can of Diet Coke all ready for when I get back) but it'll be okay.  Unless the student presentation in Human Sexuality is REALLY boring tomorrow I'll be fine- Feminist Perspectives will mostly be a recap/exploration of the issues and concepts discussed tonight and in U.S. Social Movements we'll be going 'oh man! we just wrote/outlined 15 page papers! and now you're giving us a QUIZ' which will also be okay because we know what it's on and what we need to have prepared (20 minutes preparation, tops).  So cross your fingers, wish me luck, say a prayer, whatever you like, I'm off to work!

Current Location: library, work
Current Mood: ambitious
Current Music: "When You Say Nothing At All" Alison Krauss

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Feb. 19th, 2008 11:29 pm Some fluff to counterbalance the recent posts

Although I realize there are inherent possibilities for bitterness given the subject matter.

I had a date last Thursday, for the first time in 3 years.



I really hope I don't have much homework tomorrow.

This weekend brought to you by bunnies and the letter 6!

Current Location: Lacie's house
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "My Baby Loves Me" Martina McBride

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Apr. 29th, 2007 07:46 pm So Long

Funny ad of the day: "new toy + useless boyfriend = back pain" Advil commerical.  If you look really closely at the background picture, you can tell she's pushing against a foosball tables but her expression and posture makes it look as if her, shall we say, 'nether regions' are sore and worn out.
Been meaning to write alllll week and have always put sleep as a higher priority.  I shut down when I'm tired and the more tired I am, the more I ramble and the longer it takes to record my day.  So it hasn't been happening the way I mean it to.  
So.


Now:  I feel relieved for having written this all out (was feeling kinda guilty about shirking) but a bit bummed that there's nothing too interestin to write about: just midterms stress and the aching loneliness that usually hits about once a week when I'm sitting for the little Lacie.  Not because she's not a sweet and adorable Schnauzer companion but because staying with her really separates me from the campus community, running into friends at the cafeteria, or chattin randomly with my housemates.  I feel isolated and it takes planning and deliberate effort to avoid this.  It doesn't help that I tend to feel lonely when I'm tired and when I'm tired it's hard to work up the initiative to call people and make plans when all I want to do is nap.  Grr midterms.  I'll feel better next week.
I'm annoyed at repetitive e-mails David's Bridal feels that I need to receive every single day so that I may remember they exist, particularly after the frustrating experience I had there but every once in a while (~one day every 3 weeks), they send out something useful so I don't want to unsubscribe.  Wading through all the e-newsletters I get is time-consuming but occasionally rewarding.  And I haven't gotten anywhere on what I turned the computer on to do: take care of the papers I ask Fred to send me.  So I have to decide between going to bed now and staying up later to work on them.  I'm also feeling a rueful sense of irony over how much I wrote in the past hour was a mundane recounting of events and didn't go into any real depth of anything which was exactly what I was worried about doing in my response paper.  Erf.  Anywho, too much introspection has already been done for tonight so I am logging off and gettin some real (albeit not school-related) work done.  (Example: I find myself annoyed that "How to Save a Life" which is played more on Christian stations than anywhere else, got lumped onto the newest NOW CD with a heap of absolute, complete, moral and musical junk.)  If I don't work, I am knitting until I am sleepy.  Yay warm puppies and soft afghans.  Night, all.

Current Location: Lacie's House
Current Mood: contemplative

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