I came here because I was trying to remember when I started reading Neil Gaiman books. Turns out it was 2007. Thankfully I kept track of the books I read back then. Even better, I read books back then.
It has been four years since I updated here. Since then poor Daisy and my darling Hugo have crossed the rainbow bridge. I work for one of the largest banks in the world in the travel department, And I have moved three times since the last update.
I feel like my mental health is slipping away. I am convinced I have ADHD but my therapist thinks it's all anxiety and depression.
I stopped trying to keep this thing updated but I was stopping in to take a look at something in the old photo album and figured I might update anyway. I last updated here in June. Sadly, not a whole hell of a lot has changed in that time. I got ANOTHER new car because the one I got earlier in the year died shortly before I was due to make the last payment on it. So that was awesome. I did not make that last payment and they have not tried to get their money or the car back so it's just been sitting outside of my apartment since September. New car is a 2011 Ford Fusion and it's way nicer than the Focus was. The only other thing of significance was, sadly, that my cat Greta died last month. My mom gave her to me as a graduation present and I went to college far away shortly there after so she bonded more with my mom than with me. She mostly tolerated my presence. But she's always been around since 2000, so it's sad that she's gone now. Sometimes my cat Hugo will be coming down stairs and depending on the light I think it's her before I remember that it can't be. They don't look a like, it's just that I'm used to seeing Greta come downstairs for a visit (she spent a lot of her time in my mom's room). She had been downstairs the night she died and not two hours later, my mom found her upstairs already gone. It was weird but I read online that it happens sometimes with older cats. She was with us 18 years and I hope that she had a happy life. You could never tell with Greta, she was a stuffy old broad. Oh, I also got a kitten (she came into the picture before Greta died). A co-worker found some kittens in her yard (they had been dumped there) so I volunteered to take one. She's a tortoise-shell (mostly black, though) and I named her Jester. Mostly because I usually name my pets after characters from fandoms. Jester is Laura Bailey's D&D character on Critical Role. It turned out to be a pretty apt name for her as she definitely likes to get into things and make mischief. She also has been sleeping in my room and she loves me to death in here but the minute we go anywhere else in the house, it's like I'm dead to her. At least Raaya and Hugo still love me. And Darwin of course <3 It's nearly 2019. I've had this Livejournal since April 2001. I will try to update more often but no promises.
I stopped by LJ to look at something in older posts but I got distracted and don't really remember what that was anymore. Besides, it'll probably be in one of the posts from ye olden days that randomly don't exist anymore. Anyway, I guess I haven't updated here since last September? Nothing drastically terrible has happened since then. I got the job in Hilliard and still never have any money. Why? Because my mom got a job with fewer hours than her last job and is now making even less money and is somehow making herself more of a burden. I did get a car, briefly, and then it blew up while I was driving it home from work one night. I didn't even make it 45 days with that piece of crap so it was right back to riding the bus, although I did manage to get another car pretty quickly and I've been paying on that. I should have it paid off in September. It still needs to be checked out but so far it just seems to have a wheel alignment issue and considering all the sliding I did driving home in the rain tonight, I will be getting tires within the next month and will have them do an alignment then. Our AC went out on Saturday when it was about 100 degrees outside. One window on the first floor and two on the second were the only ones we could get open. It got so hot in here I had to take Darwin over to my brother's AC-cooled apartment for a few days so the poor little guy could breathe. Maintenance didn't come to look at the AC until Monday, told us we needed a new AC and a new furnace and that they'd let us know when they were coming to install it. So, they could technically hold off until it fucking snows in order to install it because unlike heating, they aren't REQUIRED to provide air conditioning which- frankly- is bullshit if it came with the fucking apartment to begin with. Especially if you're going to paint the fucking windows shut. We have a portable AC now so the downstairs is cool but my heart aches when I think of the electricity bill that thing is fucking racking up. I've taken up crocheting but it has been too hot to actually work on anything because all of my WIPs are blankets. I have been working on something at work but the yarn I'm using for it... I didn't realize how ugly it was until I had to look at it for an extended period of time. Yuck. Oh, yeah, my brother apparently got married, like, last July or something and didn't tell me or my mother until they found out my sister-in-law was pregnant. So that was essentially what my brother got me for my last birthday. Their baby girl was born 6/14. They were more than a bit annoyed that their daughter shares 45's birthday so they took it out on her name? All total her name is 37 letters long (first, middles, and last). Luckily she probably won't go by her full name all the damn time. Also I started watching Critical Role on Youtube. I had seen stuff about it a few years back when Jennifer Hale did an episode. I saw it and was like, well, that looks dumb and didn't pay much attention to it. Then I noticed Kerri liking things from voice actors I know from video games I've played and then DND stuff and I'm like 'what is this' and started watching their first campaign which I've abandoned in my feeble hope to catch up. I'm on episode 12 and episode 24 just aired tonight. SIGH. It should be mentioned that each episode runs a MINIMUM of 2.5 hours and I think the longest I've watched so far was very near 5 hours.
Being without a car is immensely frustrating. I can't go anywhere unless my mom drives me or I take a bus. Regardless, I'm on someone else's schedule and I fucking hate it. I'd love to just walk out of work and drive home. Not walk out of work, walk 20 minutes to the closest bus stop, wait 10-15 minutes for the bus to show up, then have to transfer twice more in order to get home 2.5 hours after I got off work. It's a twenty minute drive. I like my job and with the hurricanes and flooding I've been getting a lot of extra hours, the last two weeks have been 40+ hours. But I can't get together enough money to put a down payment on a car. I've considered trying GoFundMe to try to just get enough to make a down payment but nothing let's you know how much people don't give a shit about your problems quite like a GoFundMe page. Unless you know a lot of people or have some kind of celebrity saying "hey, go give this person money" or it is brought to people's attention some other way, you are nobody and nobody gives a shit. So, yeah, it's embarrassing enough asking for help with money. It's even more embarrassing when nobody helps.
I went to an interview on Thursday with Sedgwick. They are a claims management company. It would be a full time job, higher pay than I'm getting now, and with a good company. If I get the job. They are hiring 110 people for a team with a new client and 40 people for existing teams for the people transferring over to the new team to help the newbies. I applied for a call center position but the woman who interviewed me also submitted me for another job that actually sounds better and I hope I get, but I've learned within the last two years that there's no fucking point in getting my hopes up. Moving to Columbus has destroyed a lot of things and I've had nothing but bad luck since moving here. And, honestly, I think a lot of that has to do with my mother. She's a weight around my neck, dragging me down. She got a new job that pays more, but it's still part time. Every opportunity she's had for a full time job she refuses to pursue and then bitches at me when I complain about having to put out all of MY money to cover for her. Guess what, I have a part time job too because my fucking employer lied about how quickly I'd be able to make full time. Now she's trying to wuss out of the new job before even starting it because she doesn't think she can do the work. That's why she lost a job that paid $15 per fucking hour, because she didn't put any effort into learning the job, she just gave up. The position I'm in right now, I have to work full time at a job that pays more than $11 an hour if I'm going to live by myself in Columbus. The one bedroom apartments in the complex I'm currently living in are $500+ a month and, honestly, I want to move closer to work and that's an even more expensive part of town (I currently work near Worthington and if I get the other job, it'll be Hilliard).
Most important to me right now is a car. I am not 6 years old, I don't like having people driving me around. I don't like having to sit around my apartment because I can't go anywhere. I fucking HATE the bus, especially with the changes they keep making to the scheduling and the routes, not to mention that they re-did their website so now you can't even get schedules or trip planning online because nothing is working right.
So, I guess I come here to complain but you know what, whatever. In other news, I finally finished A Storm of Swords after over a year of reading it in random spurts of reading activity. I don't read like I used to. It comes from only getting 30 minutes for lunch at work. Enough time to go to the cafeteria, get food, eat it, and go back upstairs but since I've been having to wait around for a ride to get home, I guess that's where I got the time to finish the book up.
PS, this new post editor is a piece of garbage. I don't feel like I should have to scroll down all the time to see what I am typing. Why doesn't it actually scroll down while you work? This website is such shit. I really wish I didn't have 16 years of my life documented here.
I wish I had posted something here in the meantime since my last post. Coming here and facing a barrage of Pippin pictures is rough. Everyone still misses him, obviously. Darwin seems to be stepping up into his barky shoes because he barks at almost EVERYTHING now. He was never much of a barker before, unless he had been following Pippin's lead. He's been acting out, but from what I've read that's normal. He freaks out if we put Daisy in her crate without letting him see her first. I think this is because the last time he saw Pippin was at bedtime the night before he died. Everything I read said that we should've let them see his body after he died but honestly I couldn't do it, I wasn't going to take them to him. So I've been sure to give them extra attention and play with him more. I've never lost a pet like this before. My grandparents had a habit of getting rid of dogs (giving them to family members) and the only one we kept his entire life during my lifetime was Gizmo, a Pekingese we had for about 10 years who ended up having to get euthanized because he fell down the stairs to our basement and broke his back (he was old and had no business being on those damn stairs). But this is the first time I've ever had to deal with something like this. It just makes me scared about losing Darwin. I loved Pippin, but he was never really my dog. Darwin is mine. He turned six this year.
Anyway, in other news, I've fallen in love with the manga/anime Gravitation again. I hadn't read it or watched it in YEARS. So glad I kept the manga. One thing that may or may not be known about me because most people who read this thing didn't really know me back when I FIRST got LG back in '01... I was big into anime and manga. And I am a fan of BL manga and it's older cousin yaoi. Yeah, guy guy stuff, folks. And Gravitation is definitely that. But it's also hilarious and just completely insane. The anime is kinda "eh" and doesn't have a very satisfying ending, even with the OAV. The manga doesn't really either, but it has some closure for some characters. And then there's the Remixes and the Megamixes both of which are doujinshi done by the actual mangaka of the original series that are, shall we say, just porn without plot. At least the Remixes are. I've read a few of the Megamixes (if one truly reads a Megamix DJ... There's not a lot of conversation) and, yeah, not much plot. Anyway, the anime has my favorite Japanese voice actor (Inoue Kazuhiko) in it, which is entirely the reason I watched the series in the first place and pretty much fell in love with it. Also the cast in the anime is very good. Seki Tomokazu, Orikasa Ai, dude who did Shigure's voice in Furuba, Yamaguchi Kappei. But, yeah, Gravitation. Not for the faint of heart. The manga series goes from a two-man band with the lead singer falling for a broody writer (not very original) to tons of drama about their relationship to just batshit crazy stuff like a manager who literally shoots everyone (with "safe" bullets) to a teenage label executive who flies around in a mech panda. I've noticed some people complaining about how crazy the plot gets and that Murakami completely lost any semblance of plot in the later volumes, but she definitely didn't. And it's funny. Stupid? Yes. But funny.
Anyway, enough of that. Maybe I'll post on here more. More interesting things since I've actually been trying to watch more anime lately (I had Crunchyroll for, like, a week and watched Yuri on Ice which was okay and some other BL stuff which just bored me to death with it's tropes). Anyway, I'm not going to promise more posts because that never works. We'll see what happens!
This morning, 7/11/17, my pup Pippin died. He'd been with us since he was 3 months old. We got him in August of 2007. These are all pretty old pictures of him. As he got older, he was diagnosed with epilepsy and it made him grumpy and he didn't like his picture taken as much. We used to joke that he thought we were trying to steal his soul because he would run away whenever he saw a camera or a phone pointed at him. It's been a rough day. Not being greeted by his angry barks changing to happy yaps when he thought a stranger was coming in but then he realized it was one of his people coming home has been the hardest thing. He didn't like people who weren't in his family. The only people he ever really tolerated in his presence were me, my brother, and my mom. Now it's just Darwin and Daisy sitting quietly by the door. My mom said he laid down beside her, made a noise, and she looked over and he wasn't breathing. She's convinced that because she had him climb the steps last night (because she usually had him sleep in the room with her and he wouldn't let us pick him up) that it accelerated whatever had been making him sick and ultimately killed him. Honestly I think if we hadn't gotten him upstairs last night, he would've died alone in his crate, which he hated. I'm glad that he got to be next to the person he loved most - my mom. He no longer has to suffer his increasingly worse seizures or his chronic back pain, so for that I'm glad he's at peace. I'll miss the grumpy little bastard, this place doesn't feel right without him.
So apparently I haven't updated here since January. I like to think I was doing so well before, but honestly I wasn't I guess. Let's see, what's happened since January...?
In February I was admitted to the hospital because my gall bladder was a jerk. I was there for five days before they finally took the thing out (I was admitted over the weekend plus other things) and then I was there another five days before they finally let me leave. I was ready to just get up and leave at one point but one of the awesome doctors tried to threaten me saying that if I left it would be against medical orders and insurance wouldn't cover anything. Twenty minutes later she was back singing a different tune because, gasp, she was WRONG. Also a bitch. I was not a fan of hers at all. Thankfully she isn't my actual doctor so I never have to see her face again.
So I was out of work for all of March. Out of classes too. Mostly because they put a PICC line in my arm because they found a bone infection in my foot and had me on IV antibiotics for over a month. That was SO MUCH FUN. Especially since when they first gave them to me it took nearly 4 hours each dose so a total of nearly 8 hours a day which is why I couldn't go to work or classes. They let me back to work on April 3rd and took out the PICC line on the 13th, right after they delivered a ton of medicine that I'm basically paying for but can't do anything with. I'm on oral medication right now and I have some more doctor appointments in a few weeks.
Let's see, my grandmother died in April as well. The 7th. That hasn't been fun at all. Honestly it hasn't really had the effect on me that I expected. Maybe because she had been in a nursing home for years and I haven't seen her since my grandfather's funeral three years ago. I know that sounds harsh but she had Alzheimers and barely knew who my mom was, she wouldn't have known me and I've seen what that disease does to people. I used to visit a nursing home when I was in high school and my grandmother's sister-in-law who she took care of after her brother died had dementia. I didn't need to remember her that way. I already had a pretty terrible experience of the last time I saw my grandfather alive, I didn't need the same with her. So, that was a whole thing. My mom seems to be taking this better than my grandfather's death but, honestly, she went much more peacefully. My grandfather had a pacemaker with a defibrillator that kept trying to keep his heart going before they finally turned that off so we could hear him screaming from his room every time that happened. Hence the experience I mentioned previously.
So, it's May now. I have a new job so I am no longer with the auto insurance company but I kind of hate the new gig and it won't work at all if I can go back to classes in the Fall. Right now that's up in the air because I had to petition for withdrawal because of the hospital stay and recovery period and I missed the withdrawal deadline so it's going to fuck up my financial aid (not that I really have any left, it's all scholarships and grants but if I don't get that petition fulfilled, it's going to tank my grades and I'll be fucked over big time).
I can't really think of anything else right now. I actually stayed home from work today because there has been something terrible going on with my back for the last few weeks and it's been worse within the last week or so. I don't think it's actually my back. I'm pretty sure it's something internal based on where the pain is and how it's progressed but I can't get a doctor's appt so it might have to wait a few weeks unless it gets worse and I have to go to the ER again. Let's hope not, I've had my fill of hospitals for forever.
I think it's been a very long time since I wrote anything in here. I just haven't really felt like sharing much of anything. The election was a disaster and school has been keeping me busy. Plus work. I've been working harder at finding a new job than anything. I swear to god working with auto insurance is seriously the worst job ever and I worked for Time Warner Cable and everybody HATES TWC but apparently not as much as their auto insurance provider. It hurts my head when I have to explain to people how insurance works when they don't understand why other people's actions affect their rates. Wtf do you think insurance does? Anyway, I'm not getting into it. I'm done with that place for the night.
Technically, I should be asleep. I have class tomorrow but I think I'm going to skip it. It's never good to skip a language class but honestly it is more exhausting trying to wrangle a ride to campus in the morning than having to be conscious for literally the entire day. Class days I'm awake from 630am until usually about 1-130am because I can't get my job to give me an earlier shift. Speaking of jobs, I was offered an interview for a job that pays $14.77 hourly and closes at 10 and is a mere 10 minute drive from campus. AKA: PERFECT. Unfortunately they have a four week training program that is only 8am-430pm so that bites. I had to turn them down much like I had to turn down another insurance company where I'd be doing the same terrible job but I would be getting $3.50 more an hour to do it but no. Everyone hires for evening shifts but trains during the damn day.
I got a new-to-me car. I haven't explained the need for a car or why I have been queen of public transit for the last three months and I won't unless specifically asked because it stokes rage in my heart and I don't have the energy for it. But, anyway, I bought a $600 car which has been kept it pretty damn good condition (except an issue with the bumper that I'm going to be looking into getting fixed). It's a Toyota so hopefully it hangs in there. The major problem is that it is a manual transmission and I've never driven a stick shift ever so this should be interesting... Once I figure out how to get it up here. It's in Springfield right now.
What else? There's a library fellowship I want to try to get but I probably won't do anything for it. I don't know how I'd do ten weeks in the middle of summer. I'd have to quit my job and focus on the work for the fellowship for ten weeks, assuming I'd even get it. The award is $3500 for the ten weeks, so I'd be able to pay rent and anything else. I really wish I could work part time but apparently my mom gets that luxury and I don't. I have to go to class and then work while she works 5 hours a day at a terrible paying job and gets to complain about how tired she is. Sigh. I miss living on my own SO MUCH.
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