now that the saga is nearly complete, i feel i can write about it. those of you who know me (and those of you i answer calls from at work with any frequence (^_^) ) know that i’ve been having some difficulty scheduling classes/graduating these past few months. it turns out i’ve actually been having trouble these past few years, i just didn’t know it. the problem lurked, and i was caught unawares. so, for those of you interested, i here chronicle my saga. 1999 – that’s right, i first attempted a college career ten years ago. it started well, financially at least. i got some scholarships, i tested out of several classes, i started an architecture major. or course, i soon cooled on that, and decided not to go to class that often, so my first quarter resulted in a 1.557 gpa. after i was 11th in a class of 350+ in high school. yeah, not going to class was definitely my nemesis. 2004 – but i managed to control my demons, get on the dean’s list three or four times, and changed my major from stupid architecture to beloved english. things were going alright, i was finally taking classes i liked, i was getting good grades, i was going full time and actually attending class. (^^;) then my father quit his job, tried to find another one, failed, moved to chicago, found a job there, we put our house on the market, had a buyer lined up, where about to move to chicago. this involved my father and brother living in chicago in a(n astronomically-priced) one-bedroom apartment, while the rest of us lived here in columbus in a house that was on the market, could be sold at any moment, and out of which we were regularly cast in an attempt to bring buyers into the house. we also had to keep it clean and spotless. in summary, i was under A LOT of stress. so when i ran out of funding that fall, and the financial aid department refused to help me (the fact that we were maintaining two households was not, apparently, ground for financial hardship. yeah.) i dropped out. to this day, i am surprised at how easy that was. no one even asked me why. 2004, later – the offer we’d had on the house fell through. it never sold. 2005~2008 – we gave up on relocating to chicago, dad quit his job there, moved back to columbus, we started to pick up the pieces. on a personal level, readjusting to that many people was (still is) hard. i’m not a people-person, i hate large groups. there’s 6 of us now, plus three cats. it’s like living in a boarding house. keep this in mind for the emotional trip we’re about to have, when… April 2008 – i reapply to go to college. i finally figured i’d spent enough time lazing about, i was 26 years old, i was finally gainfully (re)employed, and at a decent rate. it was time. and here is where the problems start. when i dropped out, i imagined myself to be about three quarters from the end. i figured i had a couple of general curriculum (GEC) credits to get out of the way, and then four or five major classes to take, and i could graduate. i filled out my FAFSA (the federal application for student aid) and duly sent it off to the local community college, where i planned on taking my last GEC courses before transferring back to OSU (ohio state) to finish my degree. well, i then investigated precisely what classes i could/needed to take. turns out i was considerably closer than i had imagined. as in 6 classes from the end. if not for the need to maintain a work schedule, i could have been done in two (albeit packed) quarters. unfortunately, i needed to keep my job. so i investigated precisely what 6 classes i needed: 1 GEC course, 5 english major classes. none of the classes i needed were offered at the commmunity college that i had sent my FAFSA to. and it was long past the deadline to send them to OSU. so i formed a new plan. one class a quarter at $1200+ a pop, for six straight quarters, with a graduation date at the end of Autumn quarter 2009. great! May 2008 – met with advisor, was informed i had been out of school so long, i had to abide by revised graduation requirements. got paperwork telling me which six classes i needed, reapplied to go to school. all things (apparently) on track. summer, autumn 2008; winter, spring, first half of summer 2009 – took classes, one at a time, adjusted work schedule to fit, enjoyed myself with all kinds of new learning, really hated my summer 09 course, but took it anyway. early 2009 – i fail to fill out a FAFSA for this year, either, as i believe i will not qualify. you need at least 6 credit hours to qualify for aid, i will only be taking 5. july 2009 – applied to graduate. the advisor reviews my classes, she says to me, are you also planning on scheduling this last elective for the fall? … … what elective? surprise, you have one more, silly, stupid, lower-level GEC class to take. social sciences. this is the new requirements i was telling you about. … … oh. (T_T) well of course, i’d better schedule it, then, hadn’t i. (commence freak out) august 2009 – attempted to clear holds on student account, due to first) student loans that needed to be in deferrment but weren’t, second) $400 past due balance from autumn 2008 because system continually mis-interpreted which balance i was attempting to pay, third) previous balance from summer 2009 because it took me so long to clear the other two holds. in the meanwhile, i investigated the disconnect between what i thought i was supposed to take and what i was actually supposed to take. i unearthed the pack of papers the advisor had given me some 18 months earlier and i discover the problem: the paperwork she gave me was incorrect. it has only 10 hours of social sciences required when in fact 15 are required. she said revised requirements, but she gave me non-revised paperwork. september 18 2009 – i do not have the money to clear the hold from summer quarter. $630 cannot simply materialize from thin air in time to schedule a class for autumn quarter, which is now less than two weeks away. figuring it is easier to simply fullfill the requirements rather than argue with the woman about whether she did or did not give me the incorrect paperwork. so i head down to the financial aid office to stand in line for two hours (literally) and then be told that i don’t qualify for much, since i didn’t fill out a FAFSA. this mysterious extra class will put me well past the 6 credit-hour threshold, but since i didn’t know about it until five months after the FAFSA deadline, i did not file one, and therefore can only receive the minimum of help in paying for it. it turns out the only thing i can get is a $500 emergency loan, which i duly apply for. the man tells me i should have a notice the following tuesday telling me to come in a sign a promissory note for the loan. september 22 – the following tuesday comes and goes without any notice. september 23 – the first day of class. i wait in line as long as i can at the financial aid office, but i have to go to class before i get to the front of the line to ask why i haven’t received my notification. september 24 – thursday. i’m working 10-hour days now, to make up for the time i have to take off for class. three 10-hour days will give me enough hours to qualify for the health plan, and still leave me 2 days off to take two 2-hour classes on those days. i don’t get ahold of anyone at the financial aid office. i work at an inbound call center, i cannot make a call while i’m answering them. 24th – friday. i call the financial aid office on a whim on my way to work. a miracle! i get put on hold! previously, the system was so overloaded, it simply hung up on you. i’m on hold 45 minutes, somehow taking calls on my work phone while i’m on hold on my cell phone, and finally i get a person. she seems to have trouble pulling me up, she says hold on, let me investigate, and my phone goes dead. i’ve been hung up on. i decide that’s it, i’ve had enough. luckily (a word i don’t get to use often, at least not these days) i have an awesome boss, and she lets me use a landline to call the financial aid office. i am on hold an hour and a half, but when the gentleman who answers the phone has the same difficulty in pulling me up and suggests that i hold on while he investigates, i am not hung up on. he comes back on some minutes later to tell me (apologetically, to his credit) that there is no record of my application in the system. who did i turn it in to? i describe the two guys i spoke with that day, he puts me on hold again. minutes pass. have they actually lost my paperwork? the quarter has already started, i need this money to relieve the hold on my account so that i can schedule my second class. have they lost my paperwork? … … they have. i have to go back down to the financial aid office to fill out another one. the gentleman suggests i speak to a councilor rather than just the guys at the counter. probably the most timely helpful suggestion i got from anyone at that university. but, i’ve already taken up 3 hours of my work day, i cannot take up any more. i haven’t got that many time-off hours left, and the way things are shaping up, i may need them. it will have to wait for monday. september 28 – i arrive at the financial aid office bright and early, hoping to bypass the long lines. well, at least this time i was only in queue an hour. i spoke with an actual councilor, she left a note in my account to the effect of, we’ve lost this once already guys, let’s try doing our jobs this time, and i leave relatively happy. my new notification should show up wednesday i then head from lincoln tower (the location of the office of doom) to denny (the english department and heretofore home of the arts/sciences advising department) to meet once more with my adviser and revise my graduation application, to add the new class i’m going to have to take to the ones already listed. i get to denny hall, only to find that the office has been temporarily relocated while denny is under some renovations. guess where they are now? yeah. lincoln. so i walk all the way back to where i just was. the soonest meeting i can attend is wednesy, the 30th, early. fine, i’ll take it. i go to the class i haven’t even scheduled yet, to explain to the prof that i will be scheduling as soon as the hold is off my account and apologize for any incovenience. 29, tues. – a 10-hour day. 30, wed – still no notification. my meeting with my advisor goes badly. not five minutes in, i’m in tears, as she flatly denies giving me the incorrect paperwork, despite the presence of her check marks all over my pages. she presents my options: petition to have one of my (85 credit hours worth of) extraneous classes count for the surprise requirement, or petition to have the requirement waived. finding a class to cover the requirement would involve finding a syllabus at least five years old, probably older, so i guess my option is to petition to have the requirement waived. we fill out the same form, check different boxes, and i have to write a letter explaining my need. i completely fail to bring up my other questions, i just want to go home and curl up under the sheets. i declare a mental health day and go home. i email the nice anthropology lady to say i won’t be taking her class after all, i email a super awesome english prof to apologize for skipping her class. i write my letter, email it to my advisor, move on with my life. later that night, my advisor calls me to say, why are you even taking that english class, you don’t need it. i’d noticed that, too, i said, my english major classes don’t seem to be as i assumed they would be, although the system says my major’s been fullfilled. she says she’ll forward my forms on to the committee of old dudes that decides these things, but she can’t really recommend they agree with me, since i could be taking the class i need instead of the one i don’t. i tell her i’m in the middle of an epic battle with the financial aid department about a loan to get the hold off my account so i /can/ schedule something, and suddenly a miracle occurs: she makes a useful suggestion. i can have them temporarily remove my hold, just 24 hours, but long enough for me to schedule. oh, i say. i’ll look into that. still later that night, i call in sick to work for thursday. i’ve caught whatever flu my sister had the previous week, and i’ve gone through an entire box of tissues since i’ve been home. it’s probably best i refrain from infecting the entire department. october 1, thursday – i call the financial aid department again, about temporarily removing my hold so i can schedule. oh sure, the girl says, no problem! come down and pick up this form and hand it over to the bursar, and we’ll do it. … … seriously. by the way, i ask, where’s my notification for my promissory note, which /still/ hasn’t shown up. let me check on that. … … well, you didn’t have a financial aid account, since you didn’t file a FAFSA, so we had to create one for you. that takes an extra day of processing, you should have it tomorrow morning. i leave for lincoln tower once again… but i haven’t even made it to the highway before my mother calls me. the lady from the financial aid office called back to the house phone. turns out she can do that hold release thing from there, i don’t need to come down. awesome! i race home, plug in my course’s call numbers, and… am told i don’t have access to schedule classes. (X_X) so i call the financial aid girl back. i get a different, a british, one. she says, of course you couldn’t schedule, it’s past the first friday of the quarter, you need prof permission to add a class. oh. thanks for letting me know. i can pick one up at the advising offices in lincoln, or print one out online. well, i’ll need someone to explain what i’m supposed to do with it, and all the professors i’ll need signatures from are (supposedly) on campus anyway, so i guess i’m heading down to lincoln tower after all. i get down there, i pick up a form, i head out looking for a prof to sign a form. i figure, the easier the class, the better, so i start by looking for a prof in townshend hall, for a lower-level sociology class on social deviance. his office hours turn out to be 7.45~8.30 AM daily. ok, cross him off my list. i head to the library (newly renovated) to find what other classes i can take. (p.s. our library was recently renovated, and looks lovely now. good to know my outlandish tuition payments are doing something useful, i guess.) i choose as my next targets, an anthropology class on pre-history. two options for class times, taught by TAs. i head over to smith labs to find them. smith labs is huge, by the way, originally designed for physics work, it houses the physics dept, the anthro dept, and at least two other departments that i saw. took my half an hour to learn that my targets were not there, didn’t have set office hours, and in fact hadn’t been seen by their fellows all week. oh wait, you know that class i went to on monday, the class i emailed the prof about to say i couldn’t take? she was super nice, surely /she’d/ sign a form for me! well, i left her syllabus at home, but i phone my mother (delightful woman that she is) to find the girl’s office number/hours. hours = m/w 5-6 pm, number is nowhere to be found. the class is in bolz hall, so i head over there. no luck. i phone the anthropology department, since this class is an upper-lever anthro class, and they tell me her office is 4100a… wait for it… smith labs. where i just was. yeah. so it’s back to smith. i relocate 4100 (also the office of one of the unfindable TAs, by the way) and the prof isn’t there. she’s a new girl, not actually a prof, just a lecturer, on loan from the ohio historical society. ask down at the anthro dept office for her office hours. okay. anthro dept office has no idea what her office hours are. she hasn’t turned in a paper to them. at this point, i decide it’s time to go home and regroup. the syllabus with her info is at home, lunch is at home, my feet are really starting to hurt, i’m ready to kill. i get home, double check the syllabus, call the office number listed for Dr Sharon Dean. the machine answers with someone else’s number, but i leave my info anyway. if this isn’t her number, why did she put it on her sheet? lo! and behold, i haven’t even finished my sandwich when Dr Dean calls back. i explain my situation, the delightful woman says she’d love to sign my paper, i could meet her at the historical society where she’s working at the moment and she’d be glad to help me out. AWESOMES! so i haul serious ass to the historical society (which is a really cool place, by the way. i’d love to go for pleasure some day) and meet her in the lobby, where she puts her j hancock on the form. i thank her profusely, and hightail it back to lincoln tower – the advising office closes at 5pm, and it is now 4. except i can’t get out of the parking lot. the exit gate is operated by a $4 token slot, and i don’t have any cash. i go back into the lobby, explain to the ladies at the counter my situation, and the politest lady in the world gives me a token for free. she was there to see me wait for Dr Dean and get me my paper signed. lovely ladies, both of them. i haul ass back to lincoln, hand the lady my paper, and BOOM! i am signed up for my final GEC credit, i have dropped the english class i didn’t need (which actually is really heartbreaking for me, coz it’s the one class i was really looking forward to taking, and i really really liked the professor) and i can finally get some sleep at night. — thus standeth the saga. seriously, the whole problem could probably be attributed to my inability to finish my first attempt, but i place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the incorrect paperwork. if i’d known what classes i was supposed to take, i could have taken them. not that it’s entirely her fault. my english major classes still aren’t as i discussed with my special english advisor, who had to sign off on my major, but frankly, i think i’m going to leave it alone. if they’ll let me graduate like this, i’m not going to question it. among the other loose ends to tie up are the promissory note that i still have to sign. it’s actually still thursday, so we’ll see tomorrow morning if the notice shows up. i have one of those 10-hour days at work tomorrow, so if it does i’ll have to go down at lunch and sign it. why do i still need the loan, if its only purpose was to clear the hold that i’ve already cleared? turns out, if i don’t pay my fees for this quarter by monday, they’ll drop all my classes. so now i need the loan to pay for my current quarter fees, so i can keep the class i just scheduled. this means that i have to pay my fees tomorrow, because that’s when i get paid. my full paycheck is only $618, but my mother is also one of those delightful women of this world, and she has agreed to supply me with the additional funds until i can pay her back. i’ve signed up for a tuition payment plan that splits the $1300+ due this quarter into two payments, but if the notes the financial aid advisor put in my account say only to apply the loan to my previous balance, i’ll need another ~$90 that my mother will be providing. otherwise, i can use the $500 towards my autumn balance, pay the additional $130 and gain a couple more weeks to pay the summer balance. we’ll see. i’m not counting it a success until after i walk across that stage in december. 3792 words. .

o hai~ imagine that, my website is working again! =(>_)> actually, it’s been up now for a couple of weeks, but your humble narrator is much too lazy for that whole “updating” thing. (^^;) well, ACTUALLY, she’s been much too stressed out about Real Life ™ to engage in thoughts about Internet Life ™. but this post is the promised fotodump. (^_^) for a start, my phone takes uber-saturated photos. and, as you can see, taking photos whilst driving usually means a photo that is 45 degrees from level. (^^;) not that the whole drive down was bright colors and boring pavement lines. some of it was also boring colors and boring pavement lines. … actually, there was a lot of fog in the ohio valley. or at least there was on the way there. by the time i got anywhere near ohio on the way back, it was pitch black and had been for some number of hours. (T_T) oh yeah, and this picture i found in the virginia welcome center: maybe not the name i would have chosen if left to my own devices… on the bonus plan, this was my gas milage on the way down. ~400 miles to a tank, in a 1997 nissan altima in bad need of an oil change and about 6000 miles late for it’s 90000 mile check-up. yeah. not bad. this is the picture i took of the house the morning after i got there. it was super muggy, but gorgeous. i was so happy to be there, it was about the most beautiful thing i’d probably ever seen. (^_^) and we all had at least one palm tree on our little lot, too! good thing they’re cool to look at, coz they were everywhere. and it greeted me like it knew what i was about. (*joy*) but there was one more thing required to make the house meredeth-appropriate: there. now it’s perfect. there was plenty of wildlife to greet me, too. my favorite was that poor lizard from the porch. he must have crawled in and then couldn’t figure out how to crawl back out. the sun had turned him all mummified, too~ but maybe, like me, things didn’t end all that badly for him after all…

because not a single one of you will see this post when it first goes up. because? silly 1&1 is having a 500 error at the moment. this won’t stop me from making a post, though, because i said to myself the other day, self, you should make a blog post. so here i am, making one. i think mostly this is going to be a fotodump, but it’s also going to be a narrative of my trip to florida. which was awesome. by the way~ it was a glorious week of not having to listen to anyone, not having to worry if someone else was using the shower, putting whatever i wanted on the TV (which admittedly wasn’t much), playing whatever i wanted on the stereo, going to bed whenever i wanted, making as much noise as i wanted (which also wasn’t that much, but no one else was making noise that i didn’t want, so that was nice), and waking up whenever i wanted (although that was more like, whenever the sun wanted, since it was super bright). i left right on time (read: 7 minutes late) saturday morning and started out with vigor and enthusiasm (read: it was bloody 8:07 A-friggin-M and i should have been in bed, but the thought of spending an entire week away from my cell-mates made me giddy with glee). actually, the drive down wasn’t bad (lots of pavement, but some really awesome mountains in west/virginia) until georgia. i was on i95 at that point, and had been for some 6 or 8 previous hours (the entire drive down took me a little less than 17 hours, just as google had predicted) and then it turned out that basically the entirety of georgia was under construction. (>_<) wow, that was annoying. but! i made it. i survived, i entered florida circa sometime past midnight, and continued on my way. the vacation house i was staying at (super thanks to nora!) was in a place called Vero Beach, or at least, is just outside of a place called Vero Beach, which itself is about an hour south of cape canaveral. it's a place where all the houses look like they came out of the same catalogue, the Old People's Retirement Savings package. it was a pretty nice house, a little buggy at first, but after a little clean up action on sunday, it was all better~ (^_^) i put up a youtube video tour (round about wednesday/thursday, after i finally managed to get ahold of some batteries...)

so you’ve heard my creepy voice now. i shall have to kill you. (^_^) anyhow. so i killed the buggies, recovered from my crazy long drive, and settled in to a nice routinne of avoiding the humidity (which was hideous and oogly), binding books (eventually to be listed in my shop, but preview photo below), and watching pointless reality TV on discovery health (i.e. ladies who didn’t know they were preggers and doctor’s whose patients stumpted them until it was nearly too late). i did catch a few episodes of something called The Colony, where they stuck 10~15 people in a post-apocalyptic simulation area and let them go for it to rebuilt humanity. it was borderline obnoxious, but given my (slightly disturbing) interest in blowing up the world and/or otherwise bringing about the fictitious ending of civilization, it was like the best Research Opportunity i have ever seen. i watched about 6 hours of it before i felt like i’d had enough. (^_^) although, to my current shame, i have yet to write anything of any use about it. (T_T) anyway, moving on in my Week of Justice, all was going just ducky… until tuesday. the air conditioner broke. it was like 80 when i woke up, and after i tried all the troubleshooting things and emailed my mother for suggestions and emailed Lovely Nora for suggestions, it was 85. by that time, the suggestion was to call the repair man, since all our other suggestions had failed. so the repair dude came out and charged me $80 to tell me that the coil was frozen, i should try leaving it off for a while, and maybe turn it back on that evening, and they would call me in the morning to see if i still needed them. (>_<) so i did, and the air conditioner turned back on like it knew what it was doing, which by that point i seriously doubted, but i didn't really care that much by that point, because although the dehumidifier was still working (thank the LORD) 85 is no temperature for the inside of a house. so then i got back to work. i would have continued on my bookbinding flourish, but i ran out of paper. (^_^) so on friday, i went to the nearby McKee Botanical Gardens. it was really nice~ so humid that even god would have turned back (^^;) but really nice. i took about a dozen hundred photos~ and there was even a butterfly who stopped by just to say hello. it fluttered right in front of me, and perched down on a piece of grass right next to me. so i obliged it by taking its picture. a lot. and then i took a whole 30 second video of it. and /then/ it decided to flutter away. it stayed there for a long time. like, a looong time. it was very nice. like a send off. sweet~ anyhow, then i had to pack up and think about An End to The Vacation, and get all sad and stuff. (^^;) i packed up all my bookbinding stuff friday night, and then went to bed and woke up super disgusting early saturday, hoping to repeat my relative success of the previous saturday. and here’s where things get a bit interesting. my twitters from the car say it all: [who ordered this bullshit? (>_<)] [at this point, i’m just going to jump into the south brunswick. TRAFFIC JAMS ARE EVIL.] it took me an hour. to go ten miles. yeah. i wasn’t pleased. but! i recovered. i moved on. i finally got out of georgia. eventually, i got off of i95 and onto i40. i passed through two incredibly beautiful national parks, one of which i couldn’t really see, coz it was all dark by then, and i accidentally put my jesus christ superstar cd in the cd player when i meant kylie minogue. not entirely bad. (^_^) things seemed to be going ducky. i was getting close to ohio, i was eager to pass through cinncinati at night, coz i love that city, and especially the riverfront, and i knew that i was going to pass not terribly far from where i used to live. i pulled into probably the last rest stop on the kentucky side of i75 for a potty break and a stretch. and couldn’t turn my car back on. !!! luckily, some super nice trucker dude was there to help me out, but his diagnosis was as i had feared: dead battery. when i started the car up to go to those gardens on friday, the car hadn’t really wanted to start up, but after a second it had, and i sort of hoped that maybe it was just griping because i hadn’t used it all week. no, it was trying to warn me of Impending Danger. so the trucker dude and i got my car restarted, and he was like, ok, but you can’t stop, coz it won’t start up again. (X_X)! i’m like, fine, okay, i just stopped for the bathroom, i’ve got plenty of crackers, and i’m only three hours from home. i just have to get some gas and— oh. i can’t stop for gas. but i don’t have enough gas to make it home. yeah. so i phone my sister, thank god people in my house are up that late, coz by this point, it’s pushing 1:30 in the morning, and i’m like, ok, so if my car doesn’t start and nobody there can give me a jump, i may need you to come bail me out. she’s like fine, cool, i’m ready! super awesome shoutout to sister yobo of jewelry-ninja.com (which may or may not be working due to previously mentioned 500 error issue)! so i hold out as long as i can, i get a super awesome half-tour of the riverfront circa 2 AM, until finally, at last, i have to stop for gas or i’m going to run out in the middle-of-bloody-nowhere ohio. when ohioans say middle of nowhere, we mean like, there’s not a gas station for a dozen miles in either direction, there’s not a town w/in an hour’s drive, let alone a city, and in fact what there is is lots of corn, lots of children of the corn, and not even one single street lamp for about 50 miles. yeah. so i stopped for gas at what passed for Last Chance Gas Saloon and turned the car off. i filled up the tank, paced around the car, and prayed. super hard. SUPER hard. i get back in the car, i pray some more, i realize that there’s no one at this gas station. it’s me, and the the attendant. if i need a jump, there’s no one here to give it to me. i turn the key. it doesn’t start. i super pray really hard. like, vein popping out on my forehead hard. and it starts!!! zomijesus i’ve never prayed so freaking much in my entire life. i slammed that car into gear and sped off before my car could change its mind. (^_^) well, the final hour of my journey was much more pleasant than the previous hours. as long as my car was going, it would send electricity through the battery, and i could get home. if i had to stop for anything, for any amount of time, the car would probably stall out and there is no way in HELL i would get lucky like i just had twice in the same night. i couldn’t stop. even for traffic lights. well, that’s not true. i tried to stop for the traffic light at the end of the exit ramp, but my headlights dimmed significantly when i pressed on the break pedal, so i looked real quick and there was no one, so i went. luckily, my street is about one light from the freeway exit, but unluckily, it’s a left turn, and a very long light at that. i tried to stop, i really did, i swears it (^^;) but my car started making funny noises and the dude in the car next to me looked over like, wtf is wrong with her car? and so i honked my horn and ran the light and didn’t look back. i pulled into my driveway and frankly i’m not sure if the car didn’t stall out just a little bit before i managed to turn it off. sunday was spent buying a battery (and, actually, going on a bit of a spending spree, something that was sadly lacking from my vacation due to a miss-timing of paychecks) and having my dad install it. the car’s fine now, and looking back, it was kind of fun. i like challenges, i really like adventures, and even while it was happening, i was thinking that i had wanted a change from the normal, so that’s what i got. overall, i think it was a very successful vacation. mm? that wasn’t that many photos? well… that’s true. not that i don’t have the photos ready to go. just that this post is about 500 years long already. guess we’ll just save up those photos for another day’s fotodump. maybe a day when my blog is working. (T_T) ~meredeth. this post brought to you by 17 hour drives and dimming headlights. tally-ho! .

i woke up to a very nice surprise this afternoon~ i was featured (along with about a bazillion other bookbinders, most of who’s stuff is about 100% cooler than mine, and a couple of whom i would mug for their presses if i met them on the street) in a storque (that is, the etsy blog) article about how righteously awesome bookbinding is. this would be it here: http://www.etsy.com/storque/spotlight/etsy-finds-pulp-fiction-5016/ i am especially enamoured of the ebony bone folder (because a girl can never have too many bone folders, although maybe this one should be called an ebony folder) and edwardkroon’s press. dude has a finishing press for sale, too. it’s enough to make a broke bookbinder cry. it’s certainly making this one sad. (^^;) anyhow, i had a whole post about what a nice vacation i had (a week by myself in a friend’s florida vacation home that started w/ a 16-hour dive through construction-infested georgia at 3 am, included a broken air-conditioner on a 60% humidity wednesday, and was topped off by a 10 miles to 1 hour construction horror in you guessed it georgia and a battery so dead that i had to run a red light so my car didn’t stall out) but to tell you the truth, we took down our pool today, and i’m a little exhausted. i think it’s time to help my sister set up her new shop.

thought i’d give a little update on my year’s goal, as they’ve just had a major change. things to Finish: college – completely fucked. – anthropology 597 | finished, got an A, although the system now says i don’t have any credit for it at all. – summer classes | rhetoric not hideous, but certainly not something i’ll ever do again thank you very much, final was thursday, grades expected this week, but of course i won’t get to see them until the financial aid office decides to get my paperwork proving how unable i am to pay their student loans WHILE I’M STILL TRYING TO PAY THEM FOR MY CURRENT COURSEWORK… fall classes | …which will be at least twice as much for the fall quarter as i was anticipating. i went to apply to graduate this past friday, and the lady was going over all my classes, and she’s like, “so you’re going to schedule your last social sciences elective in the fall, too?” … i was like, “what social sciences elective.” — ps, when i reapplied, this is the same lady i spoke with. the same lady who told me i had only one elective, the 597 class that i took in the spring. the one i’m not getting credit for any more. so it turns out i have to take two classes this fall instead of just the one i was planning on. either that, or go another quarter, and put off graduation until the spring. fuck? that. so it’ll be $2400 for the fall quarter. — ps, you wanna know why i had no idea about this mysterious extra class? i’ll tell you why. there are two sets of graduation requirements that may apply to me. the first being the set that was in place when i started college, back in 1999. the second set is the updated requirements that actually do apply to me, since i dropped out in the middle for so long. i’m nearly certain that the lady had the sheet for the previous requirements when she was talking to me when i met with her to reapply. she told me there was an updated set of requirements, she told me the old ones no longer applied to me, but i’m also sure she said i had only one elective left. i said to her that i knew i was so close, and that if i had to rob a bank i was gonna graduate, and she said to me that we shouldn’t do anything like that. i’m hoping i still have the paperwork in my bedroom to prove it. bills (not as big as it used to be~) – discovercard | aka rape lady nouveau. three payments down, three to go. – car! | 2 payments left, turns out i’ll be done in september. i’m seriously so happy about that it gets me a little choked up. seriously. – tuition payments (ouch) | please. let’s not even go into it. and then she was like, cap and gown are on sale for $30? i was like, i have to pay you even for the damn things i’m supposed to wear? fuck? that. crafts – replica of the national treasure 2 president’s book for my fav customer in the UK | yes, i’m still working on this. 1/2 term classes have a way of making all else in one’s life freeze. i’m actually binding it right now, though. i’ve gotta work on the presidential seal, and then i’ll be pretty much done. ’bout damn time… – diocesian books a super hit! the guy that actually ordered them was super pleased, and he said the new deacons like them, too. i’ve started listing more stuff on etsy/silkfair, too so [spam] head on over to http://books.notuboc.com to see what’s new[/spam]. — in other news, i read an article in the local paper the other day about a bunch of retail spaces they’re trying to fill south of campus. they’re starting what they’ve called Arts Alley, where they’re giving studio space to artists with free rent for a year. they haven’t started taking applications yet, but i’ve got myself on a list of interested peoples. i think public/walk-in bookbinding demos and classes would be perfect for an area right around the corner from barnes and noble~ … so a crapload of bad, a little bit of good. speaking of good, my fancy mp3 player is both fancy and an mp3 player. (^_^) i’ve kitted myself out with a fancy skin and a flash skin (which actually changes the music-playing interface, and is totally and completely awesome) and basically i then spent the entire first week saying, “wow! i’ve never heard that part of the song before!” the interface takes a little getting used to, but actually it’s not that bad. and it gives super good sound. the other super cool thing i did was make a case for it. from an altoids mint tin. that’s right, the darling child of instructables can also be made into a case for the cowon d2+. i’ll take some pictures later. for now, it’s off to kill things, final fantasy XII style. balthier + fran = win. .

i believe that god, that is, UPS, put tracking numbers on this earth to tempt the unweary and make them weak. for instance, having thusly ordered my fancy-ass new mp3 player, i duly received a tracking number from the One Who Controls Tracking Numbers, that is, UPS, and i proceeded directly into the so-called “hit the refresh button fifty hundred times in an effort to make the package arrive more quickly” phase. i feel certain that this phase will be familiar to you, dear reader, if only because i’ve talked about it before. have we not all experienced that horrid torment of knowing that the fanciest piece of music-playing equipment this side of yo-yo ma is, at this very moment, somewhere in kansas, and that the closest fix you can get on its locality is that it’s somewhere between Cerritos, California and your front door? who among us has not wanted to hunt down the UPS driver ourselves in an effort to obtain our toys that much faster? indeed, it is human nature to want our goods directly after we have purchased them, and this has been the standard for the vast majority of human existence, with only a few anomolous exceptions, such as the now-extint Lay Away Plan. however, with the advent of the internet, many things became subverted, such as the 3ngl1sh langu4g3, typefonts and even the time-honored love song. instant-gratification seems to be the byword of the internet era, and perhaps god, that is, UPS, has designed tracking numbers as some sort of cruel joke, but it turns out that when you buy something from the venerable Amazon.com, you don’t get it instantly. they use an outdated mode of delivery called “the united postal service,” that is, UPS, so that you must wait before you can play with your new toys or read your new books. i know, wait? what the hell’s that? in other news… ok, yeah. seriously. i want it, and i want it now. why has my tracking information not been updated since yesterday morning? i neeeeeeeed to know. well, not really. i do have a little paper to write. that’s due in a week. that i don’t even know what i’m writing it on. anyway. i said i’d have some pictures for you of my book for the BESTbooks bookswap, and indeed i do:

i couldn’t really get a picture of it open vertically, but you get the idea. each ‘flag’ is a different layer of the ocean, and from the top, you can see all the way down to the bottom. the cover is some sturdy chipboard covered in canvas left over from a bag i cannibalized (for the ‘leather’ on it’s bottom, a whole other series of pictures, trust me). i had some sort of nautical cord, too, but i figured, this book was about the ocean not the high seas. (^_^) i can’t wait to see what everybody else dreamed up. the swap books have been getting classier and classier as time goes on~ . this post brought to you by, that is, UPS. .

this morning, i got up well before work and hung out for a while, reading my emails, eating my breakfast, perusing the newspaper. now for those of you who smell a horror story, you may already have guessed what happened. a little bit of milk left in the bowl when you’re done with your cereal, a little bit of keyboard left exposed while you’re reading your emails, maybe a tiny little jostle of your hands while you’re attempting to move the nearly empty cereal bowl to the sink. yeah. milk. on the keyboard. cry. but! geek to the rescue!!! seriously. i modded my baby (that is, my eeepc that i spilled the milk on) a while back to improve the responsiveness of the keyboard. i put several layers of aluminium foil under the keyboard, and i swear it has saved my life. the foil prevented the milk from penetrating all the way down, where it would have soaked my motherboard and fried my poor little dear. so, geek ftw, that’s what. in other news, i have taken the plunge. that’s right, i’ve become too nerdy for those mainstream american- or japanese-made mp3 players, i have to go for some creepy obscure korean brand now. (^_^) actually, i would have bought creative if i could have, but since they apparently can’t be bothered to integrate their expansion memory into the main library, that was pretty much a non-starter for me. my current player is a 40GB zen touch (that i got when it first came out, literally five years ago) and that poor thing has survived just about everything short of actually being run over with barely a scratch on it. it’s firmware, however, is another story. true to its era, the firmware has always been a bit buggy, and it’s so old now that it randomly freezes up and restarts and resets. and of course the battery doesn’t hold much of a charge, although frankly that’s less of a problem than the random freeze ups. the other day, it froze during boot-up and wouldn’t go anywhere, so i reset it, and it froze up again. i restarted it in safety mode, tried to run a disc check? it froze during the disc check. (>_<) so i started to look into other players. it didn't take me long to see that i wasn't going to get back up to 40GBs without going zune (bleh) or ip*d (so bleh i can't even write it down). instead, i came upon this little brand called cowon known for awesome awesome sound quality and expandable memory. so, since i often get stuck on one song or one artist for a while before i move on to another, i figured maybe losing that much sheer gig-age might not be that much of a problem for me after all. for instance, over the past week, i’ve listened to imogen heap’s Speak for Yourself about a hundred bazillion times, and then the Death Note soundtrack and gackt’s GHOST single another hundred bazillion times. absolutely nothing else. so, maybe 16GBs isn’t so bad after all… anyhow, i bought it this morning (after the Milk Incident) and i’m already dying of anticipation. i want it now. a la veruca salt. never-even-mind the two books i ordered with it. i’m SERIOUSLY desirous of GOODIES right now. so instead i’m making my book for the BESTbooks swap. our theme this time was actually a book structure, called a flag book, which you can read more about on our blog. i’ve taken those science book drawings where they try to show you the layers of the ocean with a cutaway drawing as my inspiration. it’s going to be a cutaway of the ocean, with each “flag” as another layer. my inspiration actually came from a papercraft blog i was reading the other day, which for the life of me i can’t find, otherwise i would link it. coz the picture was awesomes. anyway, i’ll take some shots of the book when i’m done, you’ll see what i mean. .

today is probably only of interest if you use librarything and own a g1, and it’s a bit late i guess, but here we go anyway:

sounds like it might be an instructional porn video, ne? (^_^) anyhow my little sister and i took a couple of g1s into my lair and got to work. first off, of course, you’ll need a g1. it’s usefuly for more than just this, and i highly recommend it~ (^_^) second off, you’ll need the Barcode Scanner app for your phone. also useful for more than just this, and also highly recommended. the other thing you’ll need is the app called scan paste. this takes the input from Barcode Scanner and puts it on your clipboard. this is the important part, as you’ll see in a minute. i’m assuming you already have a librarything account. if not, get one! it’s awesome~ i’m also assuming you already have books. you should get (more) of these, too, whether you have some or not. more always = better when it comes to owning books. having thus assembled your goods, the process is as follows: open scanpaste, hit the Scan Barcode button, and scan in the barcode on your book. you want the one that actually represents the ISBN of your book, which should have the ISBN above it, and should start with 978. scan in as many books as you’re comfy with, ScanPaste will put them all in the clipboard, so unless you’re hoping to scan in 1000+ books in one go, you’ll probably be fine. i did mine 50~100 books at a time without incident. once you’re through scanning books, hit the Copy to Clipboard button. you should get a little notification telling you it was successful. from here, you have two choices, you can either go directly to the librarything website on your phone, or you can email yourself the ISBNs that you’ve just scanned in and go to librarything on your computer. i chose the latter, coz librarything doesn’t look so swell on a tiny little screen. (i say, with my 10″ eee netbook as my main computer…) from the librarything main page (after you’ve logged in, of course) click on the Add Books tab, and scroll down the page until you find the “import books” link at the bottom of the left-hand column: click on that link and it should take you to a screen with lots of blue: paste your ISBNs/barcodes into the box labeled “Paste Text” and then hit the Grab button. your ISBNs will go into a queue of ISBNs that librarything is looking up at that moment, and it may take some time, depending on how many people are ahead of you and how many codes you put in. the nice thing, is that you don’t have to stay on that page (or indeed even logged in) while librarything is looking your codes up, so feel free to browse the wide wonders of the internet whilst you await the outcome. when you come back, you should find your library expanded. you may find some duplicate entries, so i recommend double checking your newly enlarged library, and if you go back to the import books link, it will tell you how many of your codes failed, so you can go back and find those books and enter them manually if you’d like. i find that as long as you had a code that started with 978, it’s very very rare for a code to fail. i had some japanese books with 978 ISBNs that weren’t found, but i don’t think amazon.co.jp was one of my top three sources, so if you have a lot of foreign-language books, you may want to check that out. when i was through, i went from 61 to 279 books in my library. it was annoying to put them all in the appropriate Collections (a new tagging-type feature on librarything) but it was so worth it, as i now have a delightfully organized record of all the books i own, accessable from anywhere with internet access (including on my phone!).