Beware of Turtle!

I am going
dancing
this coming weekend

and if
anyone tries
to stop me from going

I'll kill them
their death will be
so sweet
and so cold

-insert massive sighs of relief here-

Went to meeting at work.  Bad-can-not-spell ops manager was not there.  Good (former) ops manager, Rick, met with me and reasonably-nice-HR-lady.

My position has been eliminated.  I have been let go without cause.   EDS has no hate for me.  I have no hate for EDS.  I am eligible for EI.  

Really - if you're going to lose your job, this is the way you want it to happen (minus the 2 weeks of freaking out due to bad ops manager with terrible communication skills who freaked me out and made me think that this wasn't going to happen smoothly at all).

I'm now at the U of M about to meet with my grad studies adviser to pick out my courses (and see if I can take the ones I want or if I have to take ookey grad courses that I'll hate).  I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that my student loan for full time studies will be approved, and am therefore enrolling in full time studies.  If they deny me, I'll un-enroll.  Better to be set up to do the full thing and have it not happen than to wait and get money, only to find out I can no longer enroll because it's too late.  I can always drop courses later.

Good thing:  there is a creative writing grad level course.
Bad thing: it's taught by the same prof I had in the second half of last year, not the awesome prof I had in the first half of last year. 

So I'm probably taking another course (or possibly two - ugh) with Mr. TerribleCommunicationSkills - however, I now KNOW he has shitty communication skills and I can work around it pro-actively to reduce my stress levels.

There's a Gothic Literature course that I'd LOVE to take, but it's a 2nd year course and I don't know if they'll let me take that in Grad Studies. (Plus it conflicts with a grad course that I suspect they will insist I take, since it's critical theory and last time I checked, that was one of them mandatory courses - It's also taught by the grad adviser, so he'll probably tell me to take it.  Poo.)

Once I'm done here, I'm off to apply for EI again.  Woo  (not).

Amusing article about twitter (which I found through someone else's post on twitter) written in 140 character chunks.  :)

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/paul-constant-reviews-twitter/Content?oid=1774875

It includes this awesome line about technology and the Internet:

When anything is made, people will find a way to see their reflection in it. As soon as their reflection appears, they'll want to fuck it.

Found this on specficmarkets 

http://www.anthologybuilder.com/match-that-artwork.php

To celebrate our graduation from beta testing, AnthologyBuilder invites authors of all skill levels to choose their favorite cover art from our database and write a story to match it. Contest Entries must be unpublished, between 1,000 and 50,000 words in length, and submitted on or before September 20, 2009.

I'm in the Osborne Cyber Cafe waiting for a friend to find me or for the rain to die down so I can take the bus home.

Wet turtle has been rained upon.

Foolish turtle brought no umbrella to work.

At least it's not freezing rain.

This coming week I have off work. After that, I am not permitted to speak of the future until details are finalized, and I also do not trust the word of people who gave vacation, then took it away and said "well, if you can't work during the vacation we took away, then you'll have to resign" so I shall be silent upon the topic of my EDS future until after paperwork has been signed (or not signed) by the end of this week off.

Sadly, because I need to remain a daywalker until people formally make up their minds on paper, I will not be dancing this Saturday. If my work is futureless, then I'll be possibly able to go dancing next week. This week, it turns out, is my niece's birthday. I shall attend the 2 year old's birth celebrations with my sibling, his gf and the two spawn they have spawned tomorrow, and then I shall get my ass to the university on Monday to start filling out paperwork to beg people for money to pay for my school. I got a letter from the U of M saying I was recommended highly for a fellowship, and had even been on a list to get one, but then funding was cut and the list became shorter, and among those removed was me.

Poo.

I think I shall attempt to get my cpr and first aid certification while I'm a daywalker, since those are 8-4:30 single-day courses. Then if I choose, I can do caring for those who can not care for themselves, something which often includes evening shifts where one merely is present in order to ensure that if anyone needs anything, their needs are met, and would include copious amounts of writing time.

It is 6pm. The turtle must now ponder - to chai tea latte or not to chai tea latte? (imagine accents on those e's - I'm too tired to figure out character mapping on a cyber cafe 'puter)

I got up at 6am today. I made some tea, did my calf stretches and went for a walk. It was early enough that no one else was awake except for one creepy old man in a fishing hat who talked to himself in his yard. I was actually doing ok until now. No migraine, no overwhelming exhaustion... until now. Now I can hear my man snoring and I want to crawl back in bed and snuggle. The urge to snuggle is one of those incredibly powerful forces that is difficult to resist. I am feeling physically pulled upstairs to bed (I don't dare go upstairs for anything or I won't come down.) I'm going to see if the wii fit will help shake me free of the clutches of the snuggle-force.

People are getting killed in Tehran for documenting what's going on there right now.
It doesn't matter what religion/belief system you follow, killing people for speaking the truth is wrong.

If you have a twitter account, change your location to Tehran with timezone gmt +3:30. Supposedly, it makes them harder to find. Will it work? No clue, but it can't hurt.

I'm not dead yet!

...I feel like going for a walk...