Moving up, on and out

Everyone at my boyfriend's house walks around on tip-toe to avoid upsetting his dad. The oils from your feet will ruin the carpet, so wear shoes or socks at all times in the house. Nobody's coming in or out of the front door anymore (he randomly changes the password to the garage entry and doesn't tell anybody). Somebody's been stealing food from the pantry (what?) so now it's locked. Lounging on the couch (leaning against the arm with your feet up on the couch) ruins the furniture, don't do it. Don't rest your socked feet against the coffee table that there's nothing on. Sitting on the furniture is ruining it, so now there's boards underneath the cushions to keep the sofa from being comfortable. No eating anywhere in the house besides the kitchen, not even a box of mike and ikes or a roll of mentos (unless you spill the box and don't clean it up, it's not even possible to make a mess with those). Buy milk, but only in gallons; The half-gallon I bought to take to my dorm and forgot in the fridge was unacceptable.

I draw the line right about the point where this being his house permits him to start yelling at me when I tell him that I was talking to Justin, not him, while he was in the other room. I'm out. Peace. Also I find it unacceptable to make fun of me for being intimidated by his volume (om nom Oklahoma stories) and that he ignores requests, polite or otherwise, for him to calm down. It's his house, he'll rage whenever he wants about whatever he wants. Actually that's not how it works. Having your name on the mortgage for a house that you're renting a portion of does NOT entitle you to verbally harass the renter.

So, today I went apartment hunting with Justin and our friend Franco. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. We figure that's all we need. And a decent enough area that Franco won't have to worry about his prized Mustang being looted. Unfortunately, it's Sunday, and a lot of places are closed.

The first place we visited was new and beautiful. A drive around the property revealed that several of the buildings were in the final stages of being built, and that the roads weren't finished yet either. The buildings were all circled around a crystal-clear pool, and the cars in the lot were all reasonably nice. The three-bedroom model was exactly what the brochure said, "Big and Bright." Unfortunately we learned rather quickly that it was a 55+ community. The receptionist said that occasionally senior communities will allow a margin of about 10% young people, but she wasn't sure that would be the case with this one. What a shame too, because none of us have a problem being quiet and respectful toward our neighbors. I'm sure it's out of our price range either way. We'll wait for a call back from the lady that may or may not come, and may or may not be good news regarding Fountainview.

We drove through a few complexes whose offices were closed, and a few that had outrageous speed bumps. The mustang actually scraped against one of the really high speed bumps, and we left that complex immediately without going in. The next place we went inside was Pine Brook, with a friendly receptionist and nice grounds. There were tons of bikes everywhere, probably indicating a lot of undergrads, a sure sign of loud parties, but the model units were good. It was on the upper end of our price range with a 15 month lease, and no dishwasher. It would be $20 extra per month to have the kitchen upgraded before we moved in. This was a concern for me, but not for the boys, who expressed content at using paper plates and bowls (*rolls eyes*). We could move in at the end of November, and Franco could bring his German Shepherd, Dozer (short for Bulldozer). Two spacious bedrooms, a bathroom and a half, and a UD bus picks up and drops off on the property. The lady assured me that we would be able to see the actual unit before signing the lease, which was comforting.

The last place we saw today was a more casual experience, we walked into the lease office and the lady told us they were having a special on their last 2 bed/1 bath unit with a 12 month lease. She took down my information and handed us the key to let us explore the actual unit that was up for rent on our own. It was half underground, with the bottom of the windowsills flush with the grass. Even from down there, the view was nice enough. The grass was maintained and at the other end there was a fence, so there would be no neighbors peering into our apartment. The first thing we really saw was the common laundry room. The sinks inside were dirty, not like "just been used" dirty, but the type of dirt that accumulates because there's something wrong with the sink and nobody's tried or been able to fix it. The washers operate on coins that you have to purchase at the rental office in rolls, and the dryers are free. For me, this wasn't a big deal. If the washer/dryer doesn't work, we can go down the road to a laundromat. Inside, the carpet was obviously freshly steamed, the living room was a little small, but that's pretty much what I had in mind. Space won't be the issue for me, price will. There was a small dining area with a really low hanging chandelier in one corner where a table was obviously intended to go. The fridge looked brand new, and the oven was clean, but the dishwasher scraped against the adjacent cabinet door. There was a ton of cabinet space. A ton. And while there was no pantry, there was a reasonably wide indention in the wall where we could put shelves of our own. The one bathroom was wide enough that two people could stand at the sink and get ready in the morning, and the faucet didn't leak when I turned it on. The first bedroom across the hall from the bathroom had a nice view out onto the eye-level lawn with a small shrub planted right in front of the window. Somebody didn't realize that shrub is going to grow to obscure all light from that window some day, but that would be Franco's room. The closet was big enough to walk into, but not quite big enough to call a walk-in closet. The master bedroom was plenty big, and the closet was HUGE. Justin and I could literally put a desk in there with a tv and a stand for the xbox/wii/PS2 and use it as a small gaming room. We half seriously dubbed it "Harry's room." You could fit a twin bed in there just fine. And most importantly, the price was right. It's a little bit below the lower end of what we were expecting per month for a 12 month lease, with heat and hot water included. I'm sold on this one, and so is Justin.

I know we need to do a little more shopping around before we dive right into something, but right now this is my top pick. I'll entertain Franco's wish to find a cheap house, and hopefully we'll tag this one before the special ends or the unit is leased to someone else.

(Campus) Life is a bitch #2

It's a bit more than a half mile to my assigned parking space. Yeah sure that's not very far, but consider that my last class will end at 2:15 and then I have to walk a half mile from that class to my dorm to get my laundry and anything else I want to take home for the weekend, then carry that stuff a half mile from my dorm to my car when I have to be to work by 3. It's not for lack of parking spaces. There's about 10 parking spaces immediately outside of Squire, and right across the street there's a whole parking lot that can hold around 50 cars and is never full. Ever. But those are gold pass lots, for people who commute to campus every day. Not for students who are paying through their teeth to not only go to UD but to live in the UD dorms and suffer the UD dining plan. Not for the students who have to have a car on campus to get to and from work two or three nights a week to pay for car insurance and textbooks, neither of which are covered by student loans or grants.

One way transit time between my dorm and work is right around 45 minutes, provided I don't stop and do anything else at all, like change into or out of a work shirt and round up my dirty laundry or assorted possessions. Traffic pending, which has gotten worse this semester. So, Monday mornings I wake up and put on a work shirt and pack up my laptop and its power cord and my notebooks and go to class. When classes are over I go straight to my car and make it to work at about 3, traffic pending. After work I usually go to Justin's house right down the road to hang out with him for an hour or so before I get back to campus. Then on Friday mornings I round up my laundry and anything I want to take home for the weekend and leave it infront of my closet so that when I get done with my classes I can hurry to my car, drive it back to my dorm, run in and grab my stuff and run back out hoping to get in and out before public safety notices my car in the fire lane and gives me a ticket. I'm usually a few minutes late to work on Fridays because the trip to my dorm adds at least 10 minutes.

On top of having to park in Never never land, I pay through the teeth to do it. A resident student parking pass for just one semester costs about $250. As many times as I've begged, they won't let me tack that into my student bill, so I have to factor that in to the amount I put away for textbooks/beginning of semester BS. Resident student lots are all pretty far away from the dorms and classrooms, and there's no bus running between them. I am allowed to park on South Campus, where there are buses running back and forth, but the buses can't be counted on, and they generally aren't running when I get back to campus at night. Also, waiting for the bus would take as much time as walking to my current lot. Even considering the headache with the buses, I'd be willing to ride them if I were allowed to buy the red parking pass, which is the lowest tier, making it the cheapest. Red pass users can only park on South Campus. And accordingly, a red pass only costs about $100 per semester. But I'm a resident student, so the lowest tier pass I'm allowed to buy is the green resident pass. I can always buy the better ones, $350 and up a semester, to park in almost any lot.

To top it all off, the last time I was in the parking services building, I overheard the lady at the desk talking about how Patrick Harker (UD President) is trying to move the school towards being more dependent on the buses. He wants everyone to park on South Campus or in the parking lot they're making where the Chrysler building currently is, and then ride the bus up to the Green and walk wherever they need to go from there. Now, I've got nothing against walking when I've got time, but being a college student means time is my most valuable resource. When I heard this, the girl in line ahead of me (we'd been making snarky remarks about the parking system the whole time. She had a ticket, I was getting a guest pass so that Justin could park in never never land while he visited me) said "Wow. If you find a way to have that kind of time, you let me know. I barely have time to eat breakfast in the morning." My response was "Well, if we cut sleeping out altogether, we can add about 6 hours to the day. That'll give us time to walk wherever we have to go on campus."

Summary: I have no time for these shenanigans! >:O

Conviction

Sometimes, when school gets really stressful and I'm about two inches away from throwing in the towel, shit goes down in such a way that it renews my conviction like a born-again Christian. About wanting to be a vet. In an "I'm really happy about the course of things right now even though I'm staring down three exams that I'm inevitably going to beat myself up over" sort of way. It's really not a huge deal, especially since rabbits aren't really the critters that I want to work with, but it still feels good to know that I succeeded when I was basically being told "no u".

Friday night, somewhere between washing, worming, immunizing and dying orange this litter of 5 flea-infested kittens, I walked out of kennel for a breather. As I passed Titus' cage, this guy and his little daughter walk up to me with a white baby bunny. He says "I dunno what's wrong with it, but it's not been doing well. We just bought it yesterday and, well I think it's got a broken back or something." And he passes this limp, barely alive critter off to me after I assure him that we'll honor the warranty and he and his daughter can pick out a new one while I set this one up in the back to be monitored specially. A broken back? No dude, this rabbit's not been eating and it's totally stressed out. Whoever sold you this animal better have explained to you and yours that a baby bunny needs time to itself, on the order of several hours at a time, in a quiet area of the house with a stable temperature. Unfortunately, it wouldn't surprise me if that wasn't mentioned to him. He said there was no rough handling when I asked, so how could it have broken its back? The girl who was on register that night told me I was wasting my time since it was just going to die anyway.

Anyway, I was told to put it not in fish back room, but in a kennel with a towel so that it wouldn't be forgotten about (fish guys, *eyeroll*). And I set out to put this bunny on a regiment that would hopefully give it enough energy to move around enough to feed itself. The rest of that night, I gave it a little bit of karo syrup and water every hour and chalked it up to a success if it was still breathing in the morning. So Saturday morning I walk in at 9 AM and find that my little rescue mission was successful by current parameters. Barely. Well, sugar is a good jump start and rehydrating is always important, but to do work (like breathing and pumping blood) the body needs calories. Glucose will get you part of the way, but it can't do it alone. So there's this product called Nutri-Cal, which is basically calories in a tube. How convenient.

Since the rabbit was barely hanging on at this point, I figured I couldn't do much harm by giving it a little Nutri-Cal with the karo and water. And while we're at it, let's throw in this vitamin water additive. I get a little inventive when I'm mixing things up for shortcuts and ease of use, especially when I know it's for a job I'll have to pass off to somebody else (I generally don't trust people to do a job right, with a few exceptions being the kennel manager and my boyfriend. No offense to everybody else. So if I can make it easier on someone else, I feel like I can eliminate the chances of them deciding not to do it, or just plain doing it wrong). So I mixed up a batch of karo water with vitamins. And I put enough nutri-cal in syringes to get the bunny through the day (assuming it survived), even after I would leave at 3. And I crossed my fingers. After the first dose, it perked up a bit, but still wouldn't move except as much as it took to lay down from the way I propped it up. Flatline in improvement from there until around 1. After that dose, it wobbled back and forth a little without standing up, at least putting in an effort to support itself.

I can't say how well it was handled after I left, or whether what I attempted was all that helpful, but it was great to learn via text that as of Monday afternoon, the bunny was eating hay on its own. A small victory, but a victory no less. With midterms tearing at my mental state, I'll take what I can get.

This is why I want to be a vet. Sure, every day won't be an episode of House. I know that I won't even be able to walk away from every work day and call it a success. I'll still have to deal with dumb people and dumb situations. And I know there will be times when I'm not able to do anything helpful. But I'd rather do anything it takes to help an animal than do anything at all to help an average human (obvious exceptions for particular individuals and children).

(Campus) Life is a bitch #1

Dining halls, meal plans, points vs. meals. Who's idea was this and why does it continue to go so horribly? Every time the University of Delaware makes a change to their food system, it seems to piss more people off than it satisfies. So at the beginning of each semester, I can choose to arrange my dining plan in one of several ways. I can have a number of meals ranging from 24 to 10 meals allotted every week. The more meals I choose to have, the less points I get to buy snacks and on-the-go meals at various food courts and markets around campus. This whole dining plan experience is mandatory for those living on campus, and costs a chunk of change that I have no accurate number for because it's tacked in with the rest of the 17 grand I owe to UD every semester or something like that. I feel like I've heard $800 before somewhere, but don't count on it, I wouldn't be surprised if it were more. I can also, and have myself, selected a bulk number of meals for the entire semester, to use each week at my own discretion. I can eat 3 meals one week and 20 the next and not lose any for using too few or be turned away for using too many. 110 meals and 350 points this semester, that's what I chose. You can have more meals and exponentially fewer points if you want.You can also spend $$$ on stuff from the dining locales, and in that case 1 point is the same as $1.

So my first issue here is that there's no conversion factor that gives you a balanced ratio of meals to points. If you spend points to get into the dining hall, it costs around 7.50 but if you spend a meal it only takes one. However, when you're choosing how many points versus how many meals you get, every meal you trade in for points doesn't get you 7.50, it gets you closer to 4. So they're encouraging students to eat meals instead of snack or grab fast food. That's great, except 3 of the 4 dining halls have exclusive hours. Breakfast is from 7:30 to 10:30, then they close until lunch at 11:30 which lasts until 2:30 or so, then they open back up for dinner from 4:30 to 7:30. If you have blocks of classes during those time periods, good luck finding grub when they finally release you. Kent conveniently offers buffet style dining from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM, but the quality of the food takes a hit as a result.

It used to be that if there was nothing else edible at Kent you could always grab a salad and a slice of pizza and call it dinner. For breakfast, you could always have an omelette cooked up to your preferences. But not anymore! Now the omelette station closes down at 9:30 along with the preparation of hot/fresh other items like sausage and biscuits and pancakes as they shift over to "continental breakfast". So if you're like me, and you have a class at 10 AM, you mosey on over to Kent at about 9:40 after you crawl out of the shower and discover that there's no more pancakes/french toast, what sausage or bacon is left is cold, the pastry options (muffins, danishes and sometimes donuts) are gone, and the milk dispenser is all out of whole and skim, and sometimes even chocolate for your cereal. There's always a waffle maker over by the applesauce and yogurt (which is covered in raisins/nuts by this time) but I would argue that it makes some nasty waffles. Bagels and bread are by a toaster oven type thing but they take a day and a half to toast and the topping options are dismal or contaminated like the applesauce. Some days there's still Silk to pour on your cereal but most days all that's left is Lact-Aid, and by that point you might as well just use water, or eat it dry. And dinner? In an effort to make the dining options classier, they've eliminated pizza from the menu except as an occasional entree (meaning I've seen it once this year, and there was only one slice left). Salad three nights a week gets old fast. I'm not some great food connoisseur, but I like to enjoy my food. When hot food is burnt AND cold, cold food is lukewarm, and nothing has spices of any sort (salt and pepper anyone?) then I get a little irritated.

So on the occasion that I decide to grab something to eat from one of the food courts on campus, I have a few options. I can trek all the way up to Trabant on Delaware Avenue. The Chick-fil-A inside is expensive, and so is the pizza (sort of like Sbarro) and the sub station. The sushi place isn't too bad for a small tray of rolls, but the wasabi has a tendency to bleed over into everything (do not want). A meal from any of those places inside Trabant runs around 7.50 (amazing how that works isn't it?). Perkins, right across the street from my dorm, has a Dunkin Donuts, which is cheap drinks and snacks but the sandwiches are as expensive as everything else. There's a salad bar (yay more lettuce) which ends up costing more than a burger because they sell the salad by weight, and dressing is heavy. A salad with a drink has been about 8.50 every time I've gotten one, and anything else on the menu usually gets me at around 7.50 (again). Note that when I say a meal, I'm not talking about a deluxe burger, large fries and a large fountain drink, I mean just the simple burger and a small fountain drink or bottled soda. Or the sub and a drink. No sides; they cost as much as the entree.

Even worse than all of that is the fact that I know I could EASILY take $10 and buy ingredients from Pathmark down the road to cook for myself in the conveniently located kitchens in every dorm building to last a week. EASILY. But I can't do that with my points, because there's no grocery store type markets. The closest thing is the frozen tv dinners that they sell at the markets for 6 points. A box of cereal is about 6 points, a quart of milk is about 3 points, and a bag of chips is about 5 points. And that's all they sell. Chips, ice cream, small containers of overpriced milk, various drinks, microwave dinners, donuts, cereal, candy bars, bulk candy, deodorant and condoms. If they sold cigarettes, they'd almost be like the gas station convenience store. Except the quick-e-mart sells flour, noodles and basic spices, and the Harrington Market doesn't.

Saint Tawny

Where does "Saint Tawny" come from? Well, I've been calling myself Tawny online for years now. Originally, I went by Kiaro, the name of my main roleplay character from AIM and Yahoo RP chat rooms. Kiaro had a friend named Mia, also played by me. Mia had five sisters and one of them was named Tawny. Apparently, there's was a semi-famous stripper by that name around the time I started playing FFXI, but that's not where I got it. In Lion King 2, Kovu has a sister (half sister maybe?) named Vitani. So I dropped the "Vi" and spelled it like it sounded to me. I also learned later that Tawny is a color, on the orange side of tan, so that's what I named my Mithra.

Right, because Tawny is the curious part about that moniker.

Before FFXI, I played an MMO called Tibia. You could probably replace the "Massively" with "minorly" and be more accurate when describing that game. If you took a classic textual multi-user dungeon (MUD) and gave it the graphics of an NES game, you'd have something like Tibia. So on Tibia I met this kid named Jack. We dated in a non-serious "We're 10 years old and don't completely know what this dating scene is all about so let's give it a try" way, and we maturely realized that we worked better as friends than we did as a couple. So we were friends with and without contact for 7-ish years, and in my senior year he and I started talking again. He told me about this religion he'd found that he thought was incredible. Discordianism.

The most important thing to know about Discordianism is that it doesn't mean anything specific. Most Discordians pay their respects to Eris, the Goddess of Discord. Since Eris is the matron deity, trying to organize this religion would be all but pointless. Actually, it would be all pointless. Instead, members are encouraged to decide upon their own meaning. Malaclypse the Younger is the figurehead of the most famous sect, the one that I most closely align with, and he puts forth a few basic guidelines. First, that every man, woman and child on this Earth is a POPE. There is an official POPE card, but one does not need to have this card to be a Pope.
The rights of a Pope include but are not necessarily limited to:

1. To invoke Infallibility at any time, including retroactively.
2. To completely rework the Erisian church.
3. To baptise, bury, and marry (with the permission of the deceased in the latter two cases).
4. To excommunicate, de-ex-communicate, re-ex-communicate, and de-re-ex-communicate (no backsies!) both his-/her-/it-/them-/your-/our-/His-/Her-/It-/Them-/Your-/Our-self/selves and others (if any).
5. To perform all rites and functions deemed inappropriate for a Pope of Discordia.

According to the Principia Discordia (the unofficial religious text of Malaclypse's sect) "Only a Pope may canonize a Saint. … So you can ordain yourself — and anyone or anything else — a Saint" ...So I did.

The wikipedia article is a good way to get your feet wet regarding Discordianism, and if you're bored you can read the Principa Discordia online in its entirety. I'm not really trying to convert you, I'm giving you this because it's worth a laugh, which is why I identify as Discordian.

Fnord.

Stephen Colbert

So, Colbert is pretty much my hero now. Maybe I have a controversial opinion regarding illegal immigration overall, but I think that most logical people ought to agree that we should leave the migrant workers alone. Some people whine about how they're taking jobs away from Americans, and in this shitty economy that's enough to piss anybody off. If I were applying to a vet clinic and I was turned away because they hired an illegal immigrant who would do the job for cheap and required no long term commitment from the clinic, I'd raise hell. However, that's not nearly the situation. United Farm Workers is/has been running a campaign called "Take Our Jobs Please" in response to the uproar about "those damn Mexicans stealing all our jobs." Since a lot of these workers are undocumented, they're pretty much at the mercy of their employers. They work long hours in hot fields and when they finally finish for the day it's likely that they'll never get the mud off of themselves. And even if they do, they go right back at it in the morning. Summary: The working conditions are shit.

So United Farm Workers got sick of people crying about the dirty Mexicans and gave Americans the option to end the dispute. The problem is, I wouldn't do those jobs, especially not for that pay. And I bet neither would you. Almost everyone in this country would rather bank unemployment checks or simply live on the charity of others than to put in the kind of work that these migrant workers do. This is where Stephen Colbert came in. He wanted to bring attention to the case (and get some lolz while we're at it) and he did so by spending a day working in the fields. The conclusion he drew was basically that if we didn't have these hardworking folks harvesting our crops, America would starve. 'Cause we sure as hell wouldn't do it ourselves. Colbert spoke at a congressional hearing regarding the case, which skyrocketed my opinion of him, and it sounded like a lot of congressmen were upset that a comedian was arguing this case. How dare someone famous bring this issue to the attention of the general public?

I fuckin' love you Colbert.

How I wound up here.

I graduated high school at the end of May 2008. Within a week, I was in Delaware, with my most necessary possessions packed into one checked bag, one carry-on and one purse. Classes would start in September. So why Delaware, and why so quickly? Well, the University of Delaware was said to have a very nice Pre-Veterinary program. My gifted ed teacher mentioned it to me once while we were discussing the colleges I should be applying to. My only real qualification was the school I went to had to be far, far away. There's hundreds of other colleges that fit. The honest answer is that I moved up here to be with my online boyfriend. Through high school I played a massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG or MMO for short) called Final Fantasy XI (FFXI). Most of the guys I dated before and during high school I had met online.

I met Justin in a leveling party (kill things for experience points together with random people) and he thought I was interesting. I told him all about why thief was a great job, and basically made myself known as an elitist. I didn't remember him afterwards, but he remembered me when he saw me leveling a different job, Beastmaster, by myself. So he stopped what he was doing and helped me. We had a really rocky friendship, mostly because at the time I was dating a jealous guy who hated Justin's guts. After Jealous Guy, there was /b/-tard, and after that I was ready to date a nice guy. Like Justin. We finally made it official (online official) on June 16th, 2007.

After Christmas that year my brother Matthew and I drove aaaallll the way up to Delaware from Oklahoma in a rental car to "check out the campus." I did a really bad job fooling Matthew. He didn't want me to tell Justin which hotel we were staying in, but I sort of directed him to one that Justin had suggested. The first morning, we were scheduled to take a tour of the UD campus, and Justin didn't know he wasn't supposed to know which hotel we were at, so when we walked outside he was standing at his car, parked a few down from ours. We recognized each other but I made a point of not looking at him so that Matthew wouldn't get suspicious. He got suspicious anyway. When Justin showed up shortly behind us to the building the tour was in, Matthew remembered seeing him before and got creeped out. That's why Matthew still doesn't like Justin. Anyway, we met Justin's parents for dinner at their place, and they liked me, so they agreed to let me stay with them if I ended up going to UD. And Justin and I hit it off.

When I got my acceptance letter, it was decided. The week of graduation I bought a one-way ticket to Delaware. I took my Wii, my PS2, a stack of cds and game discs, a scrapbook Katie and Sharlotte made for me, and all the clothes I could cram into my luggage. I had $250 to last until I could find a job, which took me about two weeks. I applied to two veterinary clinics, a daycare, Safeway, K-Mart, Dairy Queen and Pet Kare. I had an interview at one of the vets, which was dismal, and at DQ, which made me fear for my future. Just as I was resigned to working another hell job in the fast food industry, I got a call back from Pet Kare. I don't always like it there, but I know how good I have it comparatively.

Now I'm a Junior in the University of Delaware's Animal Science program, living on campus on school nights and at Justin's parents's house on weekends and breaks. I'm working towards surviving college, moving out with Justin, and somehow developing a social life.