Bah. My math homework program continues to fuck up, not recording my results when I finish the section. I saved two screen shots from two sections where this occurred, but one got corrupted. So, I have to do two more homework assignments, one that I spent all day yesterday on, as well as study for my test on Monday. And there's no guarantee that my professor (who's English barely passes muster, some days) will believe that this is the program and not me Photoshopping my way to an 'A'.
Hah. If only.

So. Good times, there.

I'm pretty much kicking back, today. I spent all yesterday fighting with my math homework, and I have no desire to do the same, today. Today is a day for laziness, reading, and tea. It's supposed to rain all day, I got free Chickfila for breakfast, and I just do not give a damn.

Happy Saturday.

I can do whatever the fuck I want to.

Fuck guilt, and fuck statistics.

SHIT, I feel better.

Also: Strange insight for today = I'm pretty sure that if they got my down to my smallest iotas of personality and humanity, you'd find nothing but marshmallow bits, caffeine, and sharpie fumes.

I got the RA position. I'm the RA for one of the most lavish living arrangements, which have kitchens and washer/dryers.

This means free living, free food, a salary, and money in my car fund.

WOOT AND HUZZAH.

My school housing admin are a bunch of prickteases. They say I'll get my results from my RA application today via e-mail, but so far, no joy.

So I'm gonna go and write Victorian pre-slash.

That'll show 'em.

I have my RA interview at noon today, which I dressed up for (as much as I ever dress up).
I set my alarm for the first and last time this week.
On my way back from class, I grabbed an abandoned traffic cone and carried it across two parking lots to set it behind a friend's car.

It's gonna be a good day.

Where da hurricane parties at?

I am so angry right now.

I got up at seven today so I could catch a ride back to Pensacola for my test. The storm looms, but I'm determined. My ride is running behind, what with the weather, and I come to realize that I'm not going to make it. In despair, I call my professor's office, telling him that I won't make it and informing him that I will be making an appointment in his office hours to plead my case and to make it up.

I then use my friend's iPhone to check my e-mail, so I can send my professor my request digitally. There's an e-mail from my professor.

Because of people like me, stranded by the storm, he's administering two tests, one today and one next Monday.

I am jubilant. I get back to campus, thrilled at the extra study time and happily unpack my bags, ready to get down to my next class of the day.

I get a phone call from my friend.

I've been in town for twenty minutes.
The school posted a notice, ten minutes ago, that all classes are canceled until fucking Thursday.

TEN. MINUTES. AGO. Like the impending hurricane was some new development.

I am so unspeakably angry and frustrated right now. I was in an absolute rush, panicking most of yesterday over the test, neglecting my family and my friends in my worry. I rush back to my responsibilities only to find that, oops, just kidding! No class on account of that pesky storm we assured you wouldn't affect classes! Take a load off, kids!

I think I'm going to cry. At the risk of sounding two years old, this is so infuriatingly unfair and stupid. I feel sick, thinking about how many sacrifices I made to be responsible about this.

I call my father, who blandly says, "I had a feeling that this would happen."

'I TOLD YOU SO' DOES NOT MAKE THIS BETTER, DAD. THANKS.

I am so, so angry at this school, right now.


EDIT: Not three seconds after posting this, I put up a 'fuck you' message to Ida on Facebook.
Someone commented on it, asking me to watch my language.
I'm exhausted, frustrated, and pissed off. But that comment toppled this whole clusterfuck of a situation into comedy. I laughed until I cried and deleted the update.
This sucks so hard, but now I see the funny side. XD

Okay, not really. I had a very sedate weekend, made better by the fact that Halloween lasted an hour longer than usual.

Got my final recommendation for my RA application over the weekend, as well, so I have officially submitted my application for the coming semester. One of the awesome things about this job is that if you submit a complete application, you get an interview. Mine is next Thursday.

Today my interest was sparked in Psych class by a speaker who came to pitch a student volunteer program, where you can go to Costa Rica, Thailand, Australia, etc. It sounds like fun, but upon further study, the cost does not equate what you can do there. For $1,000 plus, you can go for two weeks to work towards conservation of a country's ecosystem. For almost $4,000, you can go for a month to just play.
I would love nothing more than to spend time in another country, again, but a) I have a lot of course work that I have to get out of the way if I'm going to graduate on time and b) there have got to be less costly opportunities. I don't doubt that I can do it, if I really want to. It just may mean putting off buying a car for another few years. (probably worth it...)

I'll do some research.

And now, Religion class.

Yeeeeah. Spent 10+ hours yesterday studying for a Stats test, which I proceeded to dominate in a manly fashion. Stats is my bitch.

Carved a pumpkin last night, which did a lot for getting me into the Halloween state of mind. I've been having trouble getting into the groove, mostly because of school. I've done a lot of partying for Homecoming, but none of it has been particularly Halloween-esc.
People at home have made noises about me coming home for Halloween, again, but they seem to expect me to be able to get there myself. For the record, I still don't have a car and I will be god damned if I get back on a bus anytime soon.
I do, however, have my costume done! I'm going to be a counselor from Camp Crystal Lake (read: Friday the 13th). I made the shirt myself, tracing the design with sharpie. I'm going to wear short-shorts, white socks, tennis shoes, and a lot of pink makeup. I even have a whistle. I'm pretty excited, even if I don't end up going anywhere, because Halloween necessitates dressing up.

The Stats test was my main headache for this week, so I'm going to be hanging out, eating candy and pumpkin-related foods, and trying to have a great Halloween week.

Oh, wow.

See, yesterday was a strange mix of boredom and pain. I had no class (one was canceled and one teacher failed to show up) so I endeavored to get other work done. I finished my application for being an RA in the spring (I'm just waiting on the recommendations), I printed out my Art History midterm, sold back a book I'd finished reading for Lit, and finished my Halloween costume.

Finishing the Halloween costume, however, involved a lot of sharpie. By the time I'd finished, I had a pounding headache and a bad mood to match. I spent the rest of the night in my room, sulking and eating ice cream.

This morning, I rolled out of bed for Psych and as I was going to Statistics, I passed a school carnival. Statistics took second place to free food. It's a beautiful day outside, so I enjoyed the sun and wind and food, while unfortunately having my ear chatted off by a very earnest boy who might have been trying to flirt, might have not. I don't think he knew how old I was.
I feel like such a cougar, talking to boys, sometimes.

Anyway, I retreated inside to kill time before Religion, and found, on my friend's page, a gloriously colored strip of nothing but filthy, delicious porn.

My day just improved exponentially.

Old Guy is moving out!

The last straw has been laid, the camel's back is done broke, and we's gon' have us a party this weekend!!!

YUSS.

So I didn't get to sleep in as intended. In fact, I'm up only five hours after finally falling asleep.
And the reason is Old Guy.

I have given updates on this asshole, before, and I'm fairly sure that I've mentioned this sort of incident before, but for argument's sake:

Twice in recent memory, I have been awakened by someone beneath me violently slamming their door. The first time, I could not figure out what was going on. I was alone, without a cellphone, and ended up cowering in my room, clutching a knife because I was scared to death.
In the light of day, I figured that it was Old Guy doing something to 'punish' us for being loud. Pissed, I swore that I would call the cops if it ever happened, again.

Well, bright and early this morning, it happened again. This time I knew what was going on, and tried to ignore him, knowing that it was a reaction he wanted. All of my doubts of the identity of the asshole were shattered when I heard him lock his door, immediately after slamming it, a signature move. But after I was scared awake for a second time that day, I rolled out of bed and called the cops.

The cops were gratifyingly prompt in their response, going straight to his door and asking (I could hear quite clearly through my closed door) if everything was all right. I expected a denial, an insistence that it was us that were slamming the door, or even him shifting the blame to his next-door neighbor, who has a hearing problem. I knew going into this that his neighbor would probably get a knock on the door, as well, but I was pissed and freaked out and didn't care.

What no one expected (cop included) was for Old Guy to erupt into a rant about how, yes, he slammed his door, because those damn kids woke him up in the night, and he's waking them up for a change, so go ahead and fine him. He also shouted into the hallways, announcing that he will continue to do so until we learn to stop making noise, because he will not be woken up.
The cop probably blinked for a second before herding Old Guy outside, where I could hear him yelling at the cop from behind my door.

I started laughing. This had worked out in my favor in a really big way.

Finally, Old Guy stomped back into his room, and the cop came up to knock on my door. I'd been expecting it, but it was rather cold in my room and I was without a bra, so I was like, "Great."

I answered the door with my arms wrapped around me, because, you know, it's too early to be giving Pensacola's finest that kind of show, yanowaddimean?

The cop was very sympathetic and understanding as I explained that, yes, this was an ongoing theme, but we'd had no problems in a while, because we'd gone through the proper channels to handle this, and we'd thought it handled.
I told the cop about our situation before, where the kids upstairs would keep our doors open so as to talk between rooms. The cop nodded and filled in narrative blanks as I described actually speaking with Old Guy, myself, and our agreement that we would keep our doors closed and our noise down.
I also told him about the former incident, where I'd possessed no cell phone. When I mentioned that I'd figured out the identity of the culprit because I'd heard the door being locked, the cop laughed and nodded in agreement.
The cop assured me that Old Guy had been informed that it was not within his power to punish us for percieved slights against his sleep habits, and is making a formal report of the situation to Housing. I thanked him and closed the door.

Now, say what you like about cops (and I do), they are handy in a potentially dangerous situation. Old Guy is unhinged, plain and simple, and there was no way in hell that I was going to go down there to confront him. My mother did not raise any dumb ones.

I fully expect a visit from my RA in the near future, and I may or may not have to talk to the actual Housing department.
As I said, this situation went from me just hoping that Old Guy would knock it off for the rest of the night to me being the absolute victim in front of a serious authority figure. I'm annoyed about being woken up, but the evidence is mounting against this asshole. If I don't get the RA job in the spring, then hopefully, at least, this jerk will be ousted to antagonize somebody else.

I'm studying for my Psych test, tomorrow, which would be why I still haven't written about DC, yet.

And I'm reading the chapter about love.

AND IT ALL. MAKES. SENSE.

They lay it out in stages. They EXPLAIN WHY. AND I UNDERSTAND. EU-FUCKING-REKA, OKAY?!

They explain why relationships FAIL. Why people even BOTHER. I finally, FINALLY get an unbiased opinion on this bitch known as love, and it's in a school text book.

I am in the right major, you guys.

After the excitement of the lockdown, yesterday, the whole school is in a sort of catch-up mode. Classes were not physically painful, today, as my Religion professor finally shut up and let us watch a portion of Hogfather. I need to start reading some Pratchett.

It's a countdown until we shove off for DC on Friday. We're having an impromptu meeting in the Commons, where I'm sure they will spend a good 20 minutes putting the fear of God into us about getting arrested, missing the bus, vomiting on the bus, etc.

Some glorious news on that front, though! My dear friend Ryan, with whom I have communicated for years but have never formally met, will be in DC for the march on Sunday. We will finally get to meet, face-to-face, and then run off to go cause trouble. Yay!

For those who immediately began to panic about meeting some guy I met on the internet, relax, he's gay. Rape is not on the menu.

I'm kind of stalling from writing a response on the vampire story, Carmilla. Spark Notes= Lesbian Vampire Story that predates Dracula.

Anyway.

So, there is a murder suspect somewhere in the woods of our campus. There are K9 units in the woods, traffic is stopped, and there are helicopters circling.

We're on lockdown, with some students stuck in classes, some in the Library. Basically, we're sitting tight.

All of this started about an hour ago, when I saw on Facebook that there was a murder suspect on campus. I told my roommate, who hadn't heard anything. Normally, we get texts and e-mails about things like this, but there was nothing. We started checking our school's website and our mail.

According to the news, the students have received emergency texts and e-mails, which is only half true. Some of us got the texts before others, and so we passed along the information via texts of our own. We'd been in lockdown for thirty minutes before we were finally told about it.

The silver lining is that classes were all canceled.

We're not really concerned, here. I'm just glad that I was in my room while this was going down, and that I have food stocked up, in case this drags on for a while. I'll let y'all know as soon as I know.

UPDATE: We're off lockdown and, as far as I know, no one's been shot. Yay.
They've yet to make any formal announcements, although one news source mentioned the possibility of an evacuation. The popular belief is, no, we're not going to evacuate, but we're all waiting to see what happens, anyway.
A friend of mine at USF messaged me on FB, saying, "Oh, you too?"

Students continue to be ahead of the news.

This is surreal, you guys.

I am very tired, right now. It's a strange mix of real exhaustion, meeting a mental fatigue that has been growing since my Religion class, yesterday.

I have so many frustrations with my classes, right now. More than half of my professors do not know what they are doing. The other ones are very good at their jobs, at the risk of being hardasses. The combination is, in turns, rewarding and depressing.

My main problem is Religion. I will take action if this trend continues. I don't care how badly I need the credit.
My Art History teacher is teaching all the wrong things. She doesn't seem sure if she's teaching an art class, a writing class, or a history class, and in that she loses more than two-thirds of the class, including people like me, who have studied art for years.
My Statistics teacher.... eh. I'm getting by, despite him.
My Lit teacher is a hardass. I just finished a large paper for her, and I'm probably not going to get too awesome a grade on it.
My Psych class is my one and only savior. I love my Psych class. It makes sense.
I really miss things making sense.

For the record, I've seen one episode of the new season of Supernatural. My internet is not streaming-friendly.

Thank you God, it is the weekend. I'm going to bed, now.

I feel like drinking, after today.

My Religion class is like that.

Here's what I wanted this class to be: A discussion of various beliefs, told from the view of a respectful skeptic. This includes Christianity.

Here's what the class is: A preacher professor telling us about his religious beliefs, completely ignoring the syllabus in favor of his 'teachings'.

Now, I can deal with this, normally. I'm used to Christians being very vocal about what they believe in. Good for them.

But you would expect from a teacher a bare modicum of respect for those who do not share their beliefs, correct?

Well, in this class, you would be wrong.

Today we were supposed to discuss Hinduism in limited detail, and then watch The Hogfather.
What we did was sit around and talk about the Bible.

It was reminiscent of my old Sunday School courses. It was one man, backed by his choir of believers who also take the class, preaching to us.

From the number of people who participated in his enthusiastic sermon, there are exactly four non-Christians in that class. We all sit in the back, and we were all gritting our teeth, trying to remember that we needed this course credit.

Whats worse, we were directly ridiculed, in front of the entire class.

When asked why more people didn't read the Bible, if they called themselves 'Christians', I responded aloud, "Because it's long and boring and full of contradictions."
To which he replied, "Can you tell me the contradictions?"
"No. I haven't read the Bible."
"Ah."

He then began to expound to the class that a lot of people wrote off the Bible as contradictory, and yet have not read it, and how we clearly did not know what we were talking about.
I was humiliated and said no more in the class.

The professor continued to lead a discussion about Heaven and Hell, and how people got the right to go there. Other people in the class offered evidence or denied certain aspects, to which he listened and offered comparative evidence.

My friend, a Jew, who sits next to me, asked a question. He wanted to know where Christians got their concept of Hell, in the Bible, as Judaism does not have a Hell.
The professor said, "No, you're wrong," and began explaining (erroneously) how Jews did, in fact, have a Hell. As my friend continued on to explain that there was a Jewish sect who believed that one did not have to be Jewish, but could live a Jewish lifestyle and be a 'good Jewish person', the professor listened and said (I kid you not):

"I sympathize with your beliefs."

It was then that our little corner of non-God fearing religions shut up and tried to hide. We were very clearly outnumbered, and we all sat through the entire class that had openly ridiculed us, just waiting for it to be over.

My friend and I went to the Galley, where we ate ice cream and tried to calm down. I was furious. I can only imagine how my friend felt.

Until today, I had tentatively associated myself with Christianity, if not as a faith, then at least as a good way of going about things. In moderation.

Today, as before, I have lost faith in Christians and their God. I was a lot younger when something very similar happened to me. One man stood before me and said, "No, you're wrong." And I never went back.

I am going to have to sit and think long and hard before I go back to that class. It's true, I need the credit. But I do not think it is worth this.

Also, for those interested:
Losing Faith in Faith: Bible Contradictions

I got up early, today, to talk to the French professor about what French I should take next semester. The morning was damn beautiful, cool and crisp. I wasn't upset about being up early at all. The professor wasn't there, so I left to go get breakfast and go to class.

After class, I went by Starbucks and then his office. He is a very nice Frenchman, who speaks English perfectly. I stumbled along in my French and he listened, and ultimately recommended that I take French II next semester. I pointed out that my conjugations sucked, and he offered to go over them with me during his office hours. He also gave me some French magazines to read through, and several French websites that I could peruse. I was wowed by him, and I get the sense that he craves people who at least are familiar with his culture to talk to. He corrected a few of my pronunciation errors, and altogether rekindled my interest in French. I'm going to get back to him about tutoring, but my new outlook on life is telling me to jump on it. We'll see.

I also went over to the advising office and have now officially changed my major to Psychology. Whee!

I now have some papers to write, but all in all, it's been a good morning.

So, I'm doing laundry. Hold the applause.

Our dorms, cira 1969, have gotten new washers and dryers, which we were all excited about. The doors lock and everything. Heady stuff for broke college kids.

So, I put in my clothes and walk away. The door's locked, my clothes are safe.
I come back and the washer is still running. But my clothes are not in there.

I stare at the machine in incomprehension. The doors are still locked. Did Maintenance somehow break in to steal my clothes because I overloaded the washer, or something? What the hell?

By now, I'm shaking with rage at the thought of some authority figure taking my things without warning. I've been extremely sensitive about such things ever since France, and someone doing something like this to me pushes buttons we would all be happier leaving un-pushed.

I go to the RA, who is as baffled as I am. She tried to contact my residential RA and the Housing manager, whom she cannot reach. She tells me that I can come back later, and expresses her sympathy.

Still confused, I walk back to my room, past the machines. My clothes are there.

These are front-loading washers, something we are far from accustomed to. My clothes must have been pressed to the edges of the machine as it spun, and I somehow did not see them.

Feeling like an idiot, I go back to the RA to tell her what went down, who laughed with me and promised not to tell.

I feel extremely relieved and extremely foolish. But at least my clothes are clean.

For I have a story to tell.

The AC in our dorm is not working. It is currently 85 degrees in here. So, to survive, we have our door open.

There was a bug on the wall. This bug could fly. When I go to kill it, it flies ONTO MY LEG.

I react as any girl would, screaming bloody murder and jumping around until its off. And then I destroyed it utterly.

And what does Old Guy do? If you said, "Tell me to shut the hell up and that if he hears one more scream, he'll call somebody and then slam the door as hard as he could," you get a gold star.

Its going to be really interesting to see how far our feud with this guy is going to go. And if the RAs and Housing are going to take his side (the technically wronged party) or ours (the fucking normal people in this equation).

GAH.