i have my first marketing class tonight. it's from 6:00-10:00pm at Red River. The Notre Dame campus (aka hour busride across town). i was told in the summer by a friend of a friend that i would probably enjoy marketing more than the other business classes i need to take because it has "creative" elements. i fear that this will be like the dastardly List A requirement from my hons eng. undergrad all over again. "you speak German?" quoth everyone "well you're in luck! you should take Old English because you'll find Old English comes naturally!" *big knowing grinning faces of satisfaction and encouragement*. and so i show up for my first day of Old English feeling all confident, like i have an advantage and WOW was that ever NOT THE CASE. as it turns out, speaking/writing modern German is markedly different from studying a dead language that is inconsistent, varies by region and has about 500 words that function as both nouns and verbs with completely different meanings in each form. also i effing hate Beowulf. stop looking at me like that! you try to read that fucker in OLD ENGLISH and see how much you love it then.

i am trying to be positive about this course, but it's difficult because it's a FOUR HOUR night course--which is about my time-limit for things i actually LIKE doing--and it's way the hell in the middle of nowhere and it prevents me from going to Speaking Crow (open mic poetry) which i love. i keep reminding myself that it should help me towards a job with benefits and more financial stability, and that's helping a little. it would be nice not to eventually be able to deal with some of my debt and not have 80% of my monthly income gone to bills in the first week of the month.

i'm also getting anxious about my grad ap --you all remember that hilarious wacky fun time back in the fall, with great fondness, don't you?--which is idiotic because it's one thing i really can't control at this point. i would be able to push it completely from my mind had i explicitly told d to keep it under wraps. now everyone on god's smog-covered earth knows that i applied and so that's all family/casual acquaintances ask about when they see me. so when are you moving? what program did you get into again? how long is the program???? I DIDN'T GET INTO ANYTHING (yet). STOP ASKING ME. I WILL TELL YOU WHEN I'M GOOD AND READY, PERSON I VAGUELY KNOW AND/OR RECOGNIZE. OR NOT.

d keeps making me check the online status of my ap and it keeps saying "incomplete" because i'm about 99% sure they don't actually update the online status of the aps at all. i know everything was received because i tracked it all like some sort of postal bloodhound, but d convinced me i should email the advisor to confirm it was all received which i did and am now regretting because i'm going to seem like a Pestering Applicant and i work in admin so i feel i can speak with some authority when i observe that no one likes that guy.


( cut for House spoilers )

also i have nacho-flavoured cheezies in my desk. preferred breakfast of champions dread-filled poor neurotic people everywhere.

yesterday d was somewhere between asleep and awake when i finally made it to bed--he'd went to take "a short nap" after House last night, and never returned--and when i scooched in beside him the following conversation took place:

D; I'm so stressed!

Me: well, yeah. but you probably don't want to sleep in your jeans and belt and on top of your giant george constanza wallet...

D: *sighing irritably* don't interrupt me, can't you see I'm in the middle of a very lengthy and time-sensitive installation process?

Me: *still thinking he might be awake* do you mean those MP3 files you're copying to the PS3? those were done like three hours ago. it's midnight. you know that right?

D: *more irritable sighing* OBVIOUSLY NOT! This is the NEW SYSTEM. I've been working on it for the last year, and tonight is the soft launch. I can't make any mistakes! Or we'll lose the contract with the new administration.

Me: who's the new administration? do you mean the Obama administration?*

D: I can't believe this kiosk isn't working. I bet someone left the touch screen out in the rain!

Me: it's "MacArthur Park"! but with electronics instead of cake!

D: *wakes up* what were you saying about cake?

Me: don't get excited, i was just having a dreamspeak conversation with you.

D: Oh. so you weren't offering me cake, then?

Me: No. we don't have any cake. i wish we did, though.

D; *promptly goes back to sleep*



*not flip, d's company has programmed kiosks for the U.S. government in the past.




in other news, i'm tidying up the adult poetry evaluations for work, and both the poems being evaluated and the evaluations themselves are DEAD DIRE. we pay the judges, who are poets with BOOKS OUT to do write these, but obviously we don't pay nearly enough because i've so far i've thrice corrected the word "meataphors"--not a pun, the poem is not about sausage!-- in the first paragraph of the one i'm working on. the one i tackled yesterday was worse in that i actually had to add content to it. the person had submitted ALL TERRIBLE TERRIBLE ACROSTIC poems and the judge didn't even comment on their use of that form. i knew that if the acrostic form wasn't acknowledged, the person would be all "they just DON'T GET my edgy use of the acrostic form" and call and yell at me about it, when really, unless you're like Edgar Allen Poe in the 19thC or in the second grade, acrostics are generally not the best vehicle for self-expression. i said as much in the comments i added, but much more gently, pointing out that perhaps the form was more limiting than inspiring, and that maybe writing in free verse would open up new possibilities for more vividly articulating "a fun day at the beach." YEAH.


( house spoilers ahead )