they did not rocket away, they rose slowly

Last night I got out of class "early" at 9PM. I was cranky, because it was literally about seven degrees Fahrenheit out and I needed to go to the school library and then walk half a mile down to the 24-hr grocery store for milk and hummus. (I am a baby who frequently will only get her vegetables if it's by eating carrot sticks + hummus on the side of all her meals.)

Anyway, I went up to the school library in search of Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, which I should really just buy already because it's like six bucks used and I'm taking Ivan's class in the fall anyway, and I had never been up in that corner of the library before. And you guys, they have an aisle and a half of comic books. In my school library. You'd think after three years of art school I would have known or guessed this sooner.

Basically the way this turned out was that I wandered around going 8D for fifteen minutes, panicked, grabbed volumes 1-5 of B.P.R.D. for some unknown reason, walked down to the grocery store still going 8D, bought milk and hummus and a ton of pork chops (I have never eaten pork chops you guys what do I do with these) still going 8D even as my fingers were falling off from the cold.

8D

Also, when I went to Jimmy John's yesterday, they told me about their punch card (buy ten sandwiches get one free, the usual thing) and, because I'm in there so much, gave me a card with nine holes already in it. CUSTOMER LOYALTY PAYS OFF, FOR THE RECORD.

Yeah, so this really really sucks. My computer is barely useable and getting gradually worse; basically I can only do one thing at a time, and right now that thing is almost always backing up my files to box.net. I can't find my Vista install CD, so I can't send the computer to a professional place to get fixed, because if they wipe my hard drive I've paid at least a hundred dollars to make my computer completely unusable. There are things I need to be doing-- signing up for Internet service, finding a job, signing my lease, not to mention writing fic-- that I simply can't do right now, and while I'm shockingly functional 80% of the time it is amazing how hard it is to make myself eat when I haven't got anything else productive to do while doing it. And I have to get this all sorted out before the 16th, when my free box.net trial will run out.

katarin, do you know anyone with a computer running Vista? I could really, really use an install CD to borrow.

Okay, this bit of complaining is kind of complicated. Hang in there.

--> Almost three weeks ago now, I ordered two fairly expensive things: a new desk and a 30-day CTA pass, which cost about two hundred dollars combined.
--> By last Monday my credit card still hadn't been charged for the desk, so I called up the company and they went "Whups, sorry, getting on that, you should get tracking info in another day or two." And I never heard from them again.
--> The transit pass never showed up either; when I checked my confirmation email I discovered I had accidentally had it shipped to my billing address instead, which is a place I haven't lived since last June and have never bothered to change since I get all my bank alerts, etc. by email. This, at least, was my own error.
--> I called the furniture place again today, and discovered that it had been both shipped and delivered last week, and signed for by someone whose name I didn't recognize.
--> So, being irritated and needing a walk, I went down to campus to see if I could track down the envelope with my transit pass in it, and the lady in the mailroom said "Oh right, I remember your mail! It was an enormous box, we returned it to sender." And apparently the envelope from the CTA, too, but . . . what.
--> The furniture company apologizes profusely, and claims they're going to send me another desk. The Online Orders department at the CTA . . . went to voicemail.
--> Conclusion: I really need to change my billing address and start buying my transit passes in person at Jewel or somewhere; Chicago Drafting Furniture's shipping department is made of fail.

Semester is over! I survived and everything, and I'm free until the first or second week of September now \o/

And now, have a ton of photos. I don't know if anyone wants to see them, but I want to post them, so there.

First of all, ( that set design project I spent a million hours on. )

In the interim here I also did a costume design assignment and a sound design assignment. Sound design I can't show pictures of, obviously, but it was a passage from World War Z read to Nine Inch Nails' "A Warm Place"; the costume design assignment was done on a second consecutive all-nighter while watching cartoons, so the idea is sound but the quality of the work was awful. You guys don't get to see that either.

Instead, have ( the costume designs I did for the group final. )

Apparently I not only survived the semester but got an A, but it's four years since I got through an academic semester without severe embarrassment and more than that since I got an A in a class I wasn't repeating, so chances are high that I will wake up soon into the real world where I flunked. In the meantime I'm relatively free for the next six weeks, so brb buying a tank of coffee and writing all the fanfiction in the world.

Yesterday it was lovely and sunny and I went and had a picnic lunch in the park; today it was drizzly and cold and I got a hot chocolate and went used-book shopping at the book festival downtown. Both very pleasant afternoons! But ftlog, weather, it is June and you should make up your mind.

I got four books for myself and one for my mom, though! So not a bad haul for seven dollars. And I ran into my ex-boss three times, but that wasn't terribly surprising given the venue. Honestly, the Powell's tent traumatized me much worse with . . . whatever the hell new editions of the Series of Unfortunate Events they had, which were garish and hideous and made me weep into my cocoa. Helquist's cover art for the later books makes me do that anyway (what the fuck is with Sunny's hair DDDDDDDDD:) but at least the cover design used to be good :(

In slightly more important news, I'm moving next week! Down the hall into a bigger bedroom, anyway, which means I get all the fun of moving with none of the annoyance of actually having to pack. This is going to be fantastic.

Oh and, um, I've been coughing for two weeks now and I'm getting pretty sick of it. Otherwise life is fun and good but not really all that interesting. I'm way behind on movie posts and should probably do something about that.

I went to see Star Trek last night! Again. I intend to keep doing this until it leaves theaters or I get sick of it, which I expect to be never.

I was kind of disappointed, though, that the audience was so much less involved than when I went at midnight on the 8th; I mean, I expected that, but there was such a feeling of community at the midnight show. People laughed and cheered and applauded for things. Hardly anyone even laughed at things when I went last night; certainly no one cheered or applauded, not even for ( casting spoiler ) And I really missed that.

So I thought about actually going and looking into organized Star Trek fandom for the first time, the kind of fandom with fic and shipping and so on. Because I haven't really gotten into a fandom in ages and I don't really remember what being properly in a fandom feels like, and everyone else is getting into it these days and so on. And then I remembered that Trek fandom involves the kind of person who was all over the message boards a year ago when photos of filming at Starfleet Academy leaked, going "The girl cadets' skirts are all two inches too long! This movie will be an abomination! I'm not going!" (This isn't a generalization; I remember a specific person saying that he would not be seeing the movie because the uniform skirts appeared the wrong length in a couple of photos taken from a significant distance away.) Trek fandom, including the kind with fic and shipping and so on, includes the kind of people who go "Yeah, sure, the decision to cast a Korean as Sulu needs examining, but I think it's even worse that Kirk's eyes were the wrong color and Spock's earlobes aren't attached." (This, too, was a specific LJ comment I've seen, and incidentally I don't find John Cho's casting problematic but I think it's a substantially more worthy topic of discussion than Zach Quinto's earlobes.) That's what Trek fandom has the reputation for being like, and if it's going to continue being like that-- well, I've been a fan for eighteen years without involving myself much in the community and I can happily go right on doing it.

On the other hand, last night I really just had the sudden urge to be insanely geeky about everything. It was probably because I was at a geek movie prefaced by the trailers for half a dozen more geek movies, but I had this sudden rush of wanting to check out all the canons for everything ever, and just sit around the rest of my life watching things and reading things. Unfortunately this isn't really possible, so I decided to do the next best thing while I'm deciding what to do about Star Trek fandom, and the next best thing is that once I finish a draft of this fic I'm sick of kicking myself over I'm going to go straight through and watch all the TV shows. And all the movies, except that supposed tenth one that doesn't really exist because I won't let it.

You see what I did there? I came up with an astonishingly epic procrastination method five days before I start school. And then found a way to put that off. Self-sabotage harder, self, honestly.

So, yeah, going to watch a horrifying quantity of Star Trek over the next few months and possibly post about it, until I get sick of it (hopefully not) or until I run out, at which point I will then go running to the library for piles of tie-in novels. And when I run out of those it will be 2011 and the next movie will be coming out. I AM A GENIUS.

I also expect to be spending a ton of time on buses and trains, because I live right between school and work but have a decently sized commute to each, so I've got me a ton of Deadpool PDFs and I'm hunting down used copies of all the Series of Unfortunate Events books. I plan to be very, very geeky this summer. >:D

So apparently Star Trek's sheer awesome gave me JJ Abrams burnout; I was going through Lost at a completely absurd rate, but I've taken a couple of days off to catch up on assorted British shows instead.

On the one hand, this means I probably won't be caught up on Lost in time for the seaso finale on Wednesday-- sad but true. On the other hand, I somehow managed to forget how ridiculously in love I am with Primeval and The Sarah Jane Adventures, so I'm pretty happy all around. I even finally watched "Journey's End" so I could catch up on the Doctor Who specials, which were also a lot of fun, but ;___________;

The one problem I have is that my ears have felt all stuffed up for the last couple of days; it sounds like I've got earplugs in-- probably is my fault for sleeping with plugs in every night-- and my computer sounds muffled even when turned all the way up, which can't be making my roommates happy. Grargh, body, why do you hate me >:(