One Abnormal Girl

I think I was only able to post regularly back in the day when I had no one else to talk to. Now there’s peeps to chat with and I have less to say.

But today, maybe I have things to say! Not all of them are so great though.

Family

In the beginning of April, my grampa had a heart attack and fell and broke his ankle, then had another heart attack while in the hospital. The fam agreed not to resuscitate if it happened again, but then it didn’t. My parents were going to cancel their trip to come out and see me since his condition was so unstable, but he didn’t stick around. A few days later he passed away. He was the last of my grandparents. It was rough not being on the east coast, and it’s still unreal because I’m so far away, but I don’t know that it would have helped to be there. There’s not much I can do with the concept of death.

After the funeral and its related transactions, my parents did come out for their trip as planned. We spent about three days in Disneyland and California adventure. It was a good time; good to have them in SoCal, and I think it was a good break for my mom. This was also my first experience with paid time off.

Cosplay

I think, if I can kick myself into action, I’ll be attempting Ishbal!Roy. I should have just enough material left to make the coat, but I will have to make my own bias tape trim, which I am none too excited about. I do however have the ring and some extra collar plates. I would need to make a new jacket, belt (maybe), over-jacket belt, and overcoat, and I’d have to buy gators to go over the boots.

This is unfortunately the best reference of the uniform I can find at my disposal:

But let’s focus on this one instead:

Nom.

Starbucks

Today they didn’t charge me for the soy in the London Fog I ordered because I’m there so often. I love our Starbucks. I love the people who work in it.

That’s it.

Writing

I haven’t been able to write consistently since college, but recently I’ve been doing pretty well in terms of dedication. I’m steadily plowing through Unconditional, which is the longest fic I’ve attempted, though that’s not saying very much. Anyway, it’s got me actively writing and interested and I’m glad people seem to like it so far because I think I’m so emotionally invested in it that I’d cry if they didn’t. 8D

Gadgetry

Before my parents’ visit, I bought a new camera. I hope it works forever. It’s delightful. It’s a Canon Powershot SX200. Here are the things that make me geek out over it.

• Need to mute the sounds, but can’t beep beep beep your way through the menu to do it? Fear not, with the right button combination you can mute all the sounds on the fly at startup.
• It has a cute little stand-alone clock on it.
• You can temporarily increase the screen brightness without digging through the menu.
• There are two time settings: one for home and one for travel, and you can flip between them.
• There’s a timer setting that will wait for you to enter the frame, then it will take the picture.
• It can automatically detect the scene mode based on its composition.
• It can automically correct red eye, or in playback mode afterwards.
• When photographing people, it will alert you if someone’s eyes were closed.
• It’s blue. I got the blue one.

Most of these things might be standard nowadays, but it’s been a few years since I went camera shopping, and the camera has definitely endeared itself to me. It also seems to take decent pictures, the LCD on the back is ginormous (to me), and despite its relatively small size, it has 12x zoom. (It also has that neat little feature that lets you choose a color, and it will desaturate all other colors.)

More Importantly

In other news, our lease is up. ;lajd;flkajdf

The world will still be here when you get back. Honest.

Last week sometime I got the rejection letter from Cornell, so that’s one down, three to go. Ohio State seems to want me to apply for some of its scholarships, though, so I’m not sure if they’re just leading me on or what. I’ve got a bad feeling about this first rejection because I think it follows that the other three (being higher on my list of hopes) will do the same, but I’d rather not think about it until I have to. It’ll take some major overhaul to come up with an alternative life plan where I can still do and be something/someone useful.

In the meantime, I’ve got a new temp job, but it should be a pretty steady one. I’ve been at this place before, but not in the same department, and I like the atmosphere a lot. I have a cubicle, I have a computer (although I can’t get away with Intarwebs), and the phone use is limited. This in particular is good news, as one of the primary sources of stress I get from jobs is unpredictable phone calls. When you’re a temp and you barely know what the company does, it’s almost agonizing never knowing how to handle the customer/business who’s calling for a reason you can’t fathom just yet. I want to have a job doing something I’m good at. And, while insurance certainly isn’t my forte, I think I could be okay at this.

One of the definite perks, however, is that the company is replacing everyone’s old CRT monitors with widescreen 17″ flatscreens, and because IT had to bring a computer into the department for me to use, I’m the first one to have one. It’s not exactly fair to them, but IT says they’ll get theirs soon. I hope so. I’ve seen a lot of people eyeing it up, and for good reason. Their monitors are atrocious, especially with all the data screens they have to sift through all day. Definitely easier on the eyes.

Later today I have a viewing to attend, and while I have no work tomorrow, there’s the funeral. My great aunt died after a brief illness. That leaves two sisters out of five alive; my grandma was the second one to go. This aunt didn’t have any grandchildren, though, and one of her daughters had already passed due to cancer. I guess there’s only more of this to come.

ETA: Just opened the rejection letter from OSU.  2/4 done.  This had been, according to my profs who knew profs there and had written me recommendations, one of the most promising, so I’m pretty down about things at the moment.  But I guess I won’t have to worry about those OSU scholarship apps they e-mailed me about.