The One Where I'm the One Still Alive
I'm separating the death stuff and everything else into two posts. This one is the one with everything else, like fandom and that whole school thing.
Wow, where do I start with everything else? I'm actually staring down finals week -- I have two on Tuesday (biodiversity and chem) and one due Friday (a letter with certain inclusion requirements to "a person of influence" for environmental science). Given the topic of the other post, something had to give somewhere and that was calculus. It was a hot mess of a class from the beginning because the prof was a last minute hire after the scheduled prof... left? I don't actually know. Anyway, he was so badly organized and clueless, we all thought he was a first year TA for the first two weeks of class. Good times. It pretty significantly upped the difficulty level for me and, considering where I was starting from, it was a pretty rough start. It was still salvageable until D's death, but at that point I simply didn't have the time and energy for everything and that was sucking up a lot of both. So calculus (and it's required minimum of a C) was sacrificed and I'll retake it next semester. Rather unfortunately, I couldn't drop it because it would have put me below full time (thereby nixing my insurance and financial aid), so I'll have to live with the F.
On the bright side, my other 4 credit hour class is biodiversity and I've got a solid A in it. Env science is also an A and chem is either an A or B, so there's that.
Next semester is calculus I (again), general chemistry I, environmental economics, and cultural geography. Gen chem itself is 5 credits and is composed of lecture, recitation, and lab, so that's a good chunk of time. Cultural geography fulfills one of the few core requirements I didn't already have and I don't really know what I'm getting into but it sounded interesting. The description from the Geography and Planning Department is: "A learning-through-writing course. Systematic applications of the concepts of culture and cultural diversity to geographical themes and case studies." If I'm crying in April over having to write the 500th* paper for this class while having a lab write-up and calc homework due along with two upcoming exams, then someone should absolutely feel free to remind me I volunteered for it.
* Probably an exaggeration.
So that's school. What else is there? Oh, yeah, fandom. I never really leave a fandom, but the two primarily on tap right now are Guardian and Shadowhunters. My brain's being even more weird about consuming media than it was (it has origins in anxiety and needs medicated; new attempt at that in the new year), so what I can actually read/watch is pretty erratic but Guardian has been a regular exception. I can watch eps -- there's only 35, right? ;) -- and short, guaranteed fluff fics are my best bet at fiction I can read. There was one meatier one in the last month that I enjoyed a lot (Future Forged by kyrilu) but mostly it's a fic-by-fic negotiation.
Shadowhunters I can't read or watch right now (it's almost like I'm too invested? so everything's more stressful?), but I can still write it at least. The big thing is that I finished up and posted the third part of the Angelus ex Machina series in November. SUPER happy about that. At 76,000 words, it's by far the longest fic I've written. I have a few things to say about it, including why it will never be surpassed as my most ironic fic, which I'll do in a proper post of its own either later this week or the beginning of next week.
So fandom has mostly been lurking in various DIscords and scrolling through the pretty gifs on Tumblr in between metaphorical real life explosions and/or things just spontaneously catching on fire. (Fic bits on Tumblr seem to get a brain pass, too, so that's an extra bonus).
The rest of everything else, at least for update purposes, is probably the pups. They're doing well, particularly for almost 13(!) years old. River ended up having to have two teeth pulled two weeks after D died and they found a small lump under her tongue while doing the procedure. It took a couple of weeks, but the biopsy on it came back benign. Shortly after that one of her anal glands exploded. They tend to clog so the vet had already warned me it was a possibility and not a big deal. Fortunately I figured it out pretty quick when I came home to a dog wearing a certain amount of blood. It didn't hurt her (in fact, it probably relieved pressure) but she got her butt washed a lot and it was back to the vet again for topical antibiotics because you don't want that infected. Gotta love all those vet bills in a time frame when you have no idea how much money you're going to have to live on in the foreseable future.
Stress processing nodes available by mid-November: -100
Jack's running colder but he's always run a bit cold; he was the runt of the litter and has always run thin for a beagle anyway. This winter, regular trips outside have been getting to him a bit more noticeably though and he loves going outside, so it was hard on him. I managed to find a coat I thought would work despite his nudist preferences and with the environmental conditions on our property (some heavy weeds so no outer knit material, preferably wind and rain repellant, more thermal insulation than a raincoat), cringed at the price given everything in my life right now, and called it my Christmas present. It took a couple days adjustment but now he's totally fine with it and stays a lot warmer. ♥
So there's all that. Really looking forward to 4 weeks recovery before spring semester starts. Hoping Christmas road trip isn't more stress than it's worth. Need to work on the 3 chemistry chapters we didn't get to (lol, my other hot mess of a class, but that prof's 30 years in and has way less excuses) in there somewhere so I'm actually ready for gen chem. Ultimately life rolls on despite everything, sometimes surrealistically so.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. ♥ Blue :)
Wow, where do I start with everything else? I'm actually staring down finals week -- I have two on Tuesday (biodiversity and chem) and one due Friday (a letter with certain inclusion requirements to "a person of influence" for environmental science). Given the topic of the other post, something had to give somewhere and that was calculus. It was a hot mess of a class from the beginning because the prof was a last minute hire after the scheduled prof... left? I don't actually know. Anyway, he was so badly organized and clueless, we all thought he was a first year TA for the first two weeks of class. Good times. It pretty significantly upped the difficulty level for me and, considering where I was starting from, it was a pretty rough start. It was still salvageable until D's death, but at that point I simply didn't have the time and energy for everything and that was sucking up a lot of both. So calculus (and it's required minimum of a C) was sacrificed and I'll retake it next semester. Rather unfortunately, I couldn't drop it because it would have put me below full time (thereby nixing my insurance and financial aid), so I'll have to live with the F.
On the bright side, my other 4 credit hour class is biodiversity and I've got a solid A in it. Env science is also an A and chem is either an A or B, so there's that.
Next semester is calculus I (again), general chemistry I, environmental economics, and cultural geography. Gen chem itself is 5 credits and is composed of lecture, recitation, and lab, so that's a good chunk of time. Cultural geography fulfills one of the few core requirements I didn't already have and I don't really know what I'm getting into but it sounded interesting. The description from the Geography and Planning Department is: "A learning-through-writing course. Systematic applications of the concepts of culture and cultural diversity to geographical themes and case studies." If I'm crying in April over having to write the 500th* paper for this class while having a lab write-up and calc homework due along with two upcoming exams, then someone should absolutely feel free to remind me I volunteered for it.
* Probably an exaggeration.
So that's school. What else is there? Oh, yeah, fandom. I never really leave a fandom, but the two primarily on tap right now are Guardian and Shadowhunters. My brain's being even more weird about consuming media than it was (it has origins in anxiety and needs medicated; new attempt at that in the new year), so what I can actually read/watch is pretty erratic but Guardian has been a regular exception. I can watch eps -- there's only 35, right? ;) -- and short, guaranteed fluff fics are my best bet at fiction I can read. There was one meatier one in the last month that I enjoyed a lot (Future Forged by kyrilu) but mostly it's a fic-by-fic negotiation.
Shadowhunters I can't read or watch right now (it's almost like I'm too invested? so everything's more stressful?), but I can still write it at least. The big thing is that I finished up and posted the third part of the Angelus ex Machina series in November. SUPER happy about that. At 76,000 words, it's by far the longest fic I've written. I have a few things to say about it, including why it will never be surpassed as my most ironic fic, which I'll do in a proper post of its own either later this week or the beginning of next week.
So fandom has mostly been lurking in various DIscords and scrolling through the pretty gifs on Tumblr in between metaphorical real life explosions and/or things just spontaneously catching on fire. (Fic bits on Tumblr seem to get a brain pass, too, so that's an extra bonus).
The rest of everything else, at least for update purposes, is probably the pups. They're doing well, particularly for almost 13(!) years old. River ended up having to have two teeth pulled two weeks after D died and they found a small lump under her tongue while doing the procedure. It took a couple of weeks, but the biopsy on it came back benign. Shortly after that one of her anal glands exploded. They tend to clog so the vet had already warned me it was a possibility and not a big deal. Fortunately I figured it out pretty quick when I came home to a dog wearing a certain amount of blood. It didn't hurt her (in fact, it probably relieved pressure) but she got her butt washed a lot and it was back to the vet again for topical antibiotics because you don't want that infected. Gotta love all those vet bills in a time frame when you have no idea how much money you're going to have to live on in the foreseable future.
Stress processing nodes available by mid-November: -100
Jack's running colder but he's always run a bit cold; he was the runt of the litter and has always run thin for a beagle anyway. This winter, regular trips outside have been getting to him a bit more noticeably though and he loves going outside, so it was hard on him. I managed to find a coat I thought would work despite his nudist preferences and with the environmental conditions on our property (some heavy weeds so no outer knit material, preferably wind and rain repellant, more thermal insulation than a raincoat), cringed at the price given everything in my life right now, and called it my Christmas present. It took a couple days adjustment but now he's totally fine with it and stays a lot warmer. ♥
So there's all that. Really looking forward to 4 weeks recovery before spring semester starts. Hoping Christmas road trip isn't more stress than it's worth. Need to work on the 3 chemistry chapters we didn't get to (lol, my other hot mess of a class, but that prof's 30 years in and has way less excuses) in there somewhere so I'm actually ready for gen chem. Ultimately life rolls on despite everything, sometimes surrealistically so.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. ♥ Blue :)