Life Update

So many things have been happening lately, and I haven't written a blog in so long.

First of all, Colin is here!!!! Yay! He arrived on Thursday night, and I got to spend the rest of Thursday and some of Friday morning with him before he ran off to Reading for a family party. And he would have come home tonight if now for this snow (now he's coming back tomorrow).

So speaking of the snow... it's insane. Today I waited outside in this blizzardy weather for one hour waiting for the 107, and it never came. So my mom decided to get up early and give me a ride to work. Then once I got there (20 minutes late), I called my boss who told me to leave at 2:00 or whenever I felt comfortable (I was supposed to leave at 5). I hung in there until 2:10. It was crazy. I have to be there tomorrow from 10-5, but it's supposed to keep snowing until 11AM tomorrow, so we'll see how things turn out. I'm definitely going to make it in... I'm just not sure what time it will be.

In other news, school's out for winter break. It was my last semester of class... ever! So now I'm free except for this pesky 600 hour internship coming up in mid-January. I'm kinda excited about it. I mean, at least it's not class. And I enjoy working, so it's not THAT big a deal.

Christmas is in six days. Well like five now in two hours. I still have to do like half of my Christmas shopping. I just haven't had any time, and I NEVER leave it off this late normally. But Colin never told me what he wanted (still hasn't, so any outside ideas would be much appreciated), and I just haven't gotten to the store to get my mom's gifts, although I know exactly what I'm getting her.

In February, on the fifth, there is going to be a special concert to celebrate the 5th anniversary of The Academy Is' debut Almost Here. Super exciting, except for the fact that it's in Chicago :( I wsh I could go to that. It would be so much fun. I wonder if they're going to play all of the songs from Almost Here. Tom should make an appearance. That would be pretty funny. I can't believe it's only been five years. It seems like ages and ages ago when I first started listening to them.

Another 5 year reunion is coming up: my high school reunion. Yikes! The prospect of a reunion makes me feel really old. I haven't decided for sure if I'm going yet. We'll have to see. I have a lot of stuff that night, including an invitation to the MLMs album release party. I'm not sure which is more important to me at this point in time, since there are approximately 10 or 11 people who I graduated with who I actually want to see again. Not that I'm NOT open to seeing the other again, but really, if I didn't, it wouldn't be a huge deal.

Aurora's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Today was horrible (and it's not even 5 o'clock yet, so who knows, maybe it will get worse).

I'll start with the trivial horrible things.

First of all: I hate the Philadelphia Flower Show.  I'm sorry, but once a year for a week, thousands of unemployed elderly people and housewives journey to the city to look at some flowers. And they take up all the goddamn room on the trains.  And they make a ton of unnecessary noise.  I usually look forward to my morning train ride to school as a nice 40 minute chunk of time where I can chill out, relax, read a book or listen to some music, or even take a nap.  But for the next week I'll have to deal with probably not having a seat, listening to the old people yell at each other because they can't hear anything (you know I'm annoyed if I'm picking on the elderly), and a bunch of uncontrolled children.  It's horrible. 

Second: why do we get fined like $200 if we don't shovel our walks in a timely manner, yet St. Charles Seminary never has to shovel their walk?  I was trying to get from the Overbrook Train Station to work today, and had to walk through snow that sometimes was up to my knees. I almost twisted my ankle numerous times, and then made myself look like a big crazy while I shouted, "FUCK YOU LAZY CATHOLIC BITCHES!" at the top of my lungs every time it almost twisted.  Christine said that yesterday the priests were outside playing football.  Well maybe they should spend a little less time playing snow football, and a little more time shoveling their two blocks worth of sidewalk.  I knew there was a reason for not liking religion.

And of course the biggest reason why I'm pissed:  The lovely place where I work decided today to lay off 15 people.  3 of them were from my mom's department. Dawn, Donald and Bill are all now laid off.  How the fuck is a department supposed to function when they're cut in half?  Also, Debbie, who is the head of dietary (not to mention one of my friends) was laid off, and they put some incompetent new guy who didn't even know how to do his ridiculously easy job before, in her place.  How is this douche bag going to be able to run possibly the most difficult department in the building when he couldn't even do the job that a ninth grader could've done before?  Then... to top it all off, WE'RE ALL GETTING A 10% PAY CUT! Yes, now I will be making less money then I did when I first started there four fucking years ago.  The funny thing is that I was so excited last year when I got bumped up to $11/hour (which incidentally was the amount that they originally promised me when I was first hired. After I agreed to the job, they started me at $10/hour), only to get knocked down now to $9.90. Fuck that.  This is a huge deal for me, because I make just enough money during the course of a year to barely qualify for financial aid for school, and of course I get probably the lowest amount of it possible while still getting aid.  There were times last year that I was seriously down to $100 in my savings and checking combined.  Now I'm going to probably be even worse off. And because of the economy, I've already cut back on a ton of stuff. I haven't bought new clothes in forever. I haven't bought any new books or movies lately, and I've been cutting back on the amount of money I spend on food.   The worst part is that I definitely do like twice the amount of work that I did when I first started, and I do wayyy more work then the other people in my department (even my boss most of the time), and I'm still the lowest paid person in the department.  Even if they would've bumped everyone else down 10% and left me where I was, I think I still would've been the lowest paid.  And that's the problem with this place; they always take advantage of the people who actually have a good work ethic. 

I guess I'm still lucky to have a job, but it's not like they could've gotten rid of the receptionists anyway.  We're a pretty vital part of running the building.

Broken Glass

I have a piece of glass stuck in my finger.  It's been in there for a few weeks, just a little little piece in my pointer finger on my right hand.  It's a little red dot, and it doesn't hurt unless I touch it.  I did some research on if this will kill me or not, and I found out that it will not, but I still want to get it out anyway, because it's kinda uncomfortable.

So I looked up methods on how to remove it.  There were three, and I tried one of them.  The first one (the one I tried) was to soak my finger in warm water for a few minutes, then use my fingers to squeeze my other finger until the piece of glass emerged a little, and then pull it out with a tweezer.  In my cold house, the warm water felt good on my finger (lol), but it didn't remove the glass. I just made this little, needle thin hole in my skin. Weird.

The second method is to slice my skin open with a knife where I believe the glass is, and pull it out that way.  What the hell kind of crazy person would do that?  I don't think I have the balls to cut my own finger open. 

The third method is to go the the doctor and have him remove it.  Maybe one of these days I'll actually get around to going to my General Practitioner for a check up, but I'm not going to make a special trip just for this one little piece of glass. I'm pretty sure that my insurance doesn't cover glass shards in my finger.

I have a test today and I have to take the train an hour earlier then usual because apparently they're running late once they get toward the city.  Bull shit.  I'm so tired of SEPTA screwing us all over. My regular train gets me there in perfect time, but now I'm going to be there an hour early, just sitting there.  It's kinda crappy.

And you know something else that is annoying?  Temple University never ever cancels class for snow, which is okay in situations like yesterday when the snow wasn't really a huge deal, but then they don't even shovel or plow.  Broad street is plowed because it's Broad Street, but they leave a huge snow pile in the middle of the road, so that when you're crossing, you have to climb over it.  And yesterday I almost died. I was going to Anderson Hall to warm up, because I missed the train and had to wait 40 minutes or so, and as I was walking up the unshoveled ramp into the building, a girl skidded down on an icy patch and almost knocked me over. How did they just not shovel the ramp of the busiest building on campus? It's ridiculous.

Wish me luck on my test today.  I'll have plenty of time on the train and when I get to school to cram for it.