Good news!

Not sure if I went into this in a previous post, but C’s financial aid for this semester didn’t come through due to a bullshit reason involving academic bureaucracy.  Money has been super tight around here for the last month.  She paid tuition and books out of pocket and picked up an extra shift at work.  That put her working 40 hours a week (4 days) and in class the other three days (11 hours).  Suffice to say, we don’t see each other except for maybe 3 solid hours per week (not including when she sleeps next to me and snores).

But oh frabjous day!  She found out tonight that her financial aid has come through!  For now, she’s keeping the extra shift at work just to build a cushion.  But if she has to schedule herself for one shift less around tests or whatever, she won’t have to take a vacation day and the drop in money won’t kill her.  And this means there shouldn’t be any problems with financial aid over the summer, so she’ll be staying in school straight through.

This is all great because now she can get her prerequisites out of the way sooner and get into a PharmD program.  Which, in itself, is a 4-year commitment.  But the payoff will be great.

Speaking of the PharmD, who knows where we’ll end up for that?  If she wants to do it at UT, that’s fine with me.  But I’m still open to her going to Xavier and moving us back to New Orleans for a while.  After that, who knows where we might land?  I vote Oregon.  Not that I’ve even visited, but it sounds nice.

Now if we can just find me a job come June, life will be going really well.  I don’t care if it’s going back to clerical, I’m just gonna need a paycheck.

My latest addiction

On the advice of H and her boyfriend, C, I started watching the BBC series Coupling.  And oh. my. god.  That show is funny as hell.  Witty, biting, clever . . . all the things I want out of a series.   And I am completely in love with the character of Jeff, played by Richard Coyle.  He’s strange and awkward and SO weird and just incredibly adorable.  Example, the following conversation is when Jeff is trying to flirt with a woman he really likes:

Jeff: Your eyes are beautiful.  You have the eyes of 10 women.
Julia:  Um, what?
Jeff:  Not in a jar, I’m not accusing you!

And I’m including the following clip just because.  If you’ve never seen the show, watch the show!!!

Love.  Love him to death.  If I was not in a relationship, with a woman, and if I were a fictional character on a now defunct British television show, could Jeff please be my boyfriend?

Upcoming events/menus

I have decided upon my Valentine’s Day menu. Finally!

Lemon-Sage Roasted Chicken
Roasted Carrots
Haricotes Verte
Orange-Chocolate Cookies (aka the Nookie Cookies)

Also, the following day has been dubbed “Mimosa Sunday” by M and me.  One of the best Sundays we ever spent together involved sitting on her porch for hours drinking mimosas.  I would like a repeat of that, but it seemed prudent to include some food with all that champagne.  We decided to do a brunch thing which includes the breakfast casserole and a fresh fruit salad.

Which means that I’m currently writing out a shopping list, doing dishes, and cleaning out the fridge.  I threw out SO MUCH!  Leftovers that had been shoved behind jars and forgotten, vegetables I bought with good intentions that were left to rot.  I actually had to pull out the produce drawer and clean it.  I’m not proud of this.  But at least it’s done now.

Worst day?

This morning I left the house to go to class.  More importantly, to take a TEST in my first class.

Not but 2 minutes after getting onto 183 to head to campus, my car quite suddenly feels funny.  Then it starts pulling hard to the right.  I hit my flashers and manage to get onto the service road and pull into a Midas which is BOOM right there.  Lucky day.

I get out, look at my right front tire and it is FLAT.  Crazy flat, and kind of exploded looking.

Now, I have already had trouble sleeping lately.  I’m stressed, overtired, and generally not feeling too hot on the best of days.  This is enough to make me start screaming and crying right there.  Almost.

So I walk in.  “Hi! Tires, you do them?”

They do.  I sit down and proceed to email my first professor, explaining what had happened and begging for a makeup.  I email my second professor and tell her it’s not likely I can make it to her class either and PLEASE don’t think I’m just coming up with ways to get out of that class.

While I’m sitting there, the guy asks me to come with him to look at my car.  He points to my engine and tells me he is quite concerned about the fact that there’s oil all over it.  It appears I’ve blown a gasket.  Mmm-hmm, I say.  Then he points to two belts and says that not only are they very important but they’re about to have holes in them.  Mm-hmmm.

I am tired and yes, I see these things you point out to me that are wrong with my car.  Just fix them.  He gives me a list and a total and I say yes, whatever.  Fix it.  And change my oil while you’re in there.

So I finally have my car back, I am $371 poorer than I was this morning, and I look like a shithead to my professors.  Awesome.  What can tomorrow possibly bring?  Actually, that might be a dangerous question to ask.

Apartment update

So a maintenance guy came out yesterday morning to check out the washing machine and resulting damage.  He ran an empty cycle, couldn’t find or see any leaks, said they’ll get a new one and replace it.

However, once he left I noticed the carpet was wetter than it had been.  So I called the office.

“HI.  I have the screwed up washing machine issue thing.  Quick question, what if it isn’t the washing machine or a hose but part of the drainage system beyond the machine, you know, like where it drains from the second floor on down? Replacing the machine won’t fix that, don’t you think?  Can we get that looked at?”

They send another guy out, a complete idiot.  He says, well, nothing.  He drills a few holes in the soft, soggy patch of my ceiling downstairs, nothing comes out, he says it’s all fine.

I say, that sheetrock needs to be replaced anyway or something funky will grow in there and EWW.  Let us all turn to the lesson of Katrina people: wet sheetrock grows bad things.

Then the carpet guy comes by (the most competent of anyone).  He rips the carpet back, rips out the pad, sprays some foul-smelling antibacterial spray on the board under the carpet, puts the carpet back, and sets up a huge fan on the ground.  It seems to be working pretty well so far.  He says he’ll be back in a couple days to replace the pad.  The fan, however, is so loud that the cat is just about losing her shit and we have to turn it off at night because we can’t sleep through it.  White noise it may be, but that is some really loud freaking white noise!

And that’s where we’re at.  I’m calling or stopping by the office again tomorrow to talk about someone replacing the sheetrock and looking at the two vents where water was dripping through.

Stupid, stupid, stupid day.

Holy shit!

Tonight I ran a load of laundry.  Sat in the office upstairs working and studying, never heard anything unusual.  After a while I emerge, look down at the carpet, and . . . there is a GIANT wet spot.  I mean gigantic.  And it looks like it would have been bigger except the laundry pile of towels and blankets outside the utility door caught a lot of it.

Oh. my. God.

So I start grabbing towels and soaking it up.  I don’t know what else to do.  I just keep doing that and throw all the towels into the tub.

And then I get downstairs.  The ceiling is dripping in one corner onto a bookshelf.  Two feet away, a chair pad is wet in my dining room.  There is a drip in my downstairs bathroom.

OH. MY. GOD!!

So I move things, grab buckets, all that.  And then I . . . well, just who in the hell do I call in this situation?  The apartment office is closed.  I called and left them a message and put in an urgent service request online.  And then I called C at work just to tell her about it because seriously??  The washer exploded.