Bit of Ivory

while surfing at work and couldn’t resist. I love this show!

to let everyone know I didn’t drop off the face of the planet. Now that finals are over, I’ve moved back home–which means Bye-bye full-time high-speed internet access. Needless to say, it’s difficult sharing a 56k dial-up connection with 6 people. So I haven’t been on as long (or as much) as usual. But all is well. Except that I miss my internet.

WAHOO!!! No more classes until September! I’d do backflips if I knew how, and if my stomach muscles weren’t rebelling at me for doing the AbSlide yesterday. Ouch. But I guess that means it’s working.

Now, the real fun starts–packing up, moving home, cleaning, and geting ready for the 45 minute communte I’m going to have to do every weekday from now until the end of August, since I’m living in Murray but working in Provo. I look at it this way– a great chance to listen to some books on tape. Can you say “Harry Potter”? And other stuff, too, I’m sure. I’ll have to take a gander at the books on tape available at my local library.

In any case, I’m FREE!!!!! YEA!!!!!!

	You are Kermit! Though you’re technically the star, you’re pretty mellow and don’t mind letting others share the spotlight. You are also something of a dreamer.
Take the What Muppet Are You? Quiz!

Very funny, considering Nicole’s favorite Muppet is Kermit, and she got the Swedish Chef.

Two to go. I’m very tired. I’d like to cast petrificus totallus on whoever it was in the administration that decided that 7am finals would be a great idea. If I wasn’t a good Mormon girl, there’d be some serious swearing going on. As it is, I’m going to bed. I’ve got another 7am final tomorrow–that luckily my teacher postponed until 8, but it’s still too early.

Can’t wait for Thursday.

See what Care Bear you are.

*chortle* Yeah, I think that about covers it. I have Love-A-Lot Bear and Tenderheart Lamb from when I was a kid. I probably should have had Bedtime Bear, now that I think about it.

Man, am I glad I bought that laptop a week ago. Today would have been an absolute DISASTER without it. Okay, get this. I’ve got a group project due in my Modern American Usage class today. We’ve known about it all semester, right? Each group is supposed to pick 20 usage items to research, do a report on them, and then make up 5 exercises for each item, making a total of 100 exercises. Well, okay, cool. My group had 4 girls in it. We each got 5 items to do. We were supposed to bring them all on Tuesday. But, knowing me, I put it off until the last second, and promptly got too busy the night before to do my part. So I thought, “well, I’ll just offer to put them all together, that way it’s a punishment for not getting done when I was supposed to be, and I have two more days to finish!”

Good plan, right? Well, it would have been–except my roommate doesn’t own a computer, and she had a big term paper due as well. And while I now have a laptop, I didn’t buy a new copy of WordPerfect (I can’t STAND Word, but that’s another story for another day), because the license allows me to install it on two computers. Only problem is, the program can’t be running on both computers at the same time. Before you think I’m *that* uptight about the law, I was all ready to use both computers, but it wouldn’t have done any good anyway, because I was way too busy to do anything homework-related at all. I had a choir concert on Tuesday night, which lasted until 9:30, and after it was over I went back to my apartment and had cake with my mom who had driven down. By the time she left (and Gilmore Girls was over, which we taped), I was too exhausted to do anything. Then last night, I worked from 1-4, then again from 6-10, and barely had enough time in between to check my e-mail and eat dinner.

So, I get home from work at 10:15, and instead of working on the project, I sit down an gossip with the roomies about the Harry Potter fanfiction they’re all writing (I am the only one with no plot bunnies for a story of my own, although I’ve come up with some good ideas for their’s), and don’t get started on the project until about 11:30, at which time I check my e-mail to get the other girls’ parts, which they were supposed to e-mail to me. And guess what! One of the girls FORGOT to include her excercises! So I e-mail her, hoping she’ll get it, and
stay up till 1:30 writing my own history parts, but waiting on the exercises, since I had a break from 11:00 to 12:00, which was when the report was due. That, and I just couldn’t stay awake any longer.

I wake up this morning, lug my laptop to campus, and go to my first class, which is at ten, and then head over to the library to finish up my part, hoping that there were exercises waiting in my inbox. Well, once I’d plugged in and booted up my laptop, guess what!?! No exercises! So I waste some time online (Arguing with Teri over who was the greatest procrastinator in the world. I’ve decided it’s a tie. Haven’t heard back from Teri yet), and then wrote my exercises. At this point, it is 11:50, and no exercises have arrived in my inbox. There wasn’t enough time to print the thing even without them, so I just packed up my laptop and went to class, hoping the other girl would be there and that my teacher would be in a lenient mood (she usually is, so I wasn’t too worried). The other girl was there, and hadn’t gotten my e-mail, and didn’t realize the exercises were due at the same time as the report. So I open up my laptop, stick it on her desk, and let her make them up on the spot. The teacher said that as long as they were done by the end of class, it would be all right, and that I could e-mail them to her and she would print them, so I wouldn’t have to pay for the paper. Luckily, there was an ethernet port in the classroom, so I attached the file and e-mailed them to my teacher.

After class, I went with my teacher to her office, where we attempted to print the file. Only problem is, she’s got a Mac, and while she has WordPerfect for Macintosh, for some reason it didn’t want to read the file. So I got out my floppy, and we try again. No dice. So finally I walked down to the computer lab, paid $1.40 (10 cents a page) to print out the stupid thing, walked back up to her office, and handed it in.

What a nightmare. But it’s done, and my laptop was a lifesaver, and I am duly grateful that my dad would lend me the money to buy it a week ago.

I might point out that this whole thing was only slightly due to my procrastination, since the other girls didn’t send me their stuff until I was already at work, which means I couldn’t have done it until after ten anyway, which means the girl who forgot her exercises wouldn’t have gotten the e-mail, since she last checked it at 9:30. So I still say that you should never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until next week.

Now I need to go read 2 books for editing that I was supposed to be reading all semester and that I have a book report due on Saturday for. But just think! Today was the last day of class until September! Whoo-hoo!

Guess what! I’m writing this post from my brand-new laptop! Well, I guess it’s not really brand new, since I got it used. But it’s brand new to me! It’s a Dell Latitude CPx, and I got it at the BYU Bookstore for $899. It’s got a Pentium III, 256 MB of RAM, an 11 GB hardrive, a CD_RW, a combo 56k modem/Ethernet card, and it’s mine, all mine! Welll, technically it’s my dad’s, since I had to borrow the mone from him until I start working full time this summer. Even more technically, it’s my credit card company’s, since I put it on my card, and my dad hasn’t transferred the money into my account yet to pay it off. But in any case, I like it a lot and I’m all giddy at the thought of me owning a laptop! Hee Hee! *giggles insanely* And I thought I wasn’t materialistic. *shrug*

I took a Benadryl last night to try and make my dwindling Allegra supply last longer (it’s official: my doctor says he has to examine me before he’ll prescribe anything. Man, I miss Dr. Bentley), and I think the buildup of drowsy-causing medications in my bloodstream is catching up with me. I’ve been terribly drowsy all day long. Just staying awake in class was an adventure. It’s not the kind of class that you take a lot of notes in, so to keep myself awake I started writing the lyrics to the songs I’m supposed to be memorizing for choir. Sheesh.

Uh, oh. I just remembered I was supposed to do bread of some kind for the potluck at work tomorrow. I’d better try and find that recipe for foccacia bread. Bye!

Let me get something perfectly clear before I go on with this post: I LOVE spring. It’s my absolute favorite season. I love being able to shed coats and sweaters and venture out in short sleeves and sandals. It’s lovely. I love the flowers, I love the trees blooming, I love the grass getting green– it’s all wonderful!

That being said, there is one thing about spring that I absolutely hate: allergies. Stupid pollen. Two weeks ago, just as it was starting to get really warm, I started sneezing. I’ve been sneezing ever since. I’ve taken Benadryl. Doesn’t work. I dug up my prescription of Allegra from last year. It helps a little, but not enough. I have to use eye drops, because nothing I take touches my itching eyes, which are compounded bu the fact that I wear gas-permeable contacts. I’d like to try Zyrtec, which is about the only prescription allergy medicene I haven’t tried since they took Seldane off the market (I LOVED that stuff, it actually worked), but I’ve had to switch doctors since I turned 21, and I don’t think my new one will just prescribe me anything without having an appointment, which I can’t get because I’m still in school.

So allergies suck. Which leads me to today. I was in a hurry to leave this morning, and I neglected to take my Allegra. So I sneezed all through choir rehersal, and at the reference desk at the library, and on the way home. So tonight I had a bridal shower, but my allergies had basically died down by then, so I didn’t bother taking anything. I was very stupid. Because when I got to the house where the shower was, the hostess had not only a dog, but a cat as well. Oh, did I forget to mention? I’m allergic to dogs and cats, too. So I was basically miserable the whole time. I came home and took an Allegra straight away. I still haven’t fully recovered. There was good food at the shower, though.

Okay, rant over. Luckily, I don’t do that very often. But these allergies are driving me CRAZY!!!