I love late night TV. I’m watching some infomercial on one of the spanish stations. They’re so much more interesting than our commercials… This one is selling some sort of religious thing, but they keep showing an icon of the virgin mary, a coin showing a cross on it, another coin showing a star of david and some hebrew script on it, and a woman dressed up like a witch presiding over some sort of day of the dead ceremony. The witch images are followed by images of new cars, including an H2. I almost wish I spoke the language… although it’s probably a lot funnier because I don’t know what they’re saying.

Ooh! now they’re showing the coins in front of picutures of pyramids!! And it comes with a CD compilation about(?) to(?) for(?) the virgin of guadalupe! Woot!

Irony: I’ve been at the LAN party for at least 4 hours and I haven’t played anything yet. My computer balked on Quake 3, and seems to be having trouble copying another game from the DVD I burned. (seriously. I burned the DVD with data located on an external drive faster than it is taking to copy half the DVD onto my internal drive.)

Fortunately, the company is amusing, and watching the carnage over Frylock’s shoulder is almost as much fun as creating the carnage. And Toulon introduced me to ginger ale and bourbon. That tastes better than you might think.

I’m having a good time. Maybe someday I’ll get to blow shit up.

The scene: Monacita had left about an hour ago. The dogs were fed, had gone to the bathroom, and had come back in the room. The pug (The Puggy Wonder) went straight back to his bed after breakfast. Polly Prissy Pants (the aussie)wandered around the room a little, then laid down.

The action:

A dog starts barking on the trail. Polly’s ears perk up, then she’s up and bounding out of the room, and crashing through the dog door.

I look up, look at the time, and realize that Wilde is probably still trying to sleep. I leap out of bed and go running for the living room to try and call Polly Prissy Pants. After the second step I realize there is something soft and wet on the bottom of my left foot, and I’ve just ground it into the carpet.

I stop and growl “Polly!” fairly quietly, and look at the bottom of my foot… the aussie had brought in a little chunk of poo on her fur and dropped it on the carpet. Not all that unusual, but because of their recent change in diet, it’s soft, squooshier, dyed, and smellier than normal.

I go hopping into the bathroom, grab a wad of toilet paper and clean up my foot. Listening in the background, I don’t hear Polly barking.

I come out of the bathroom to find an absolutely dismayed Aussie looking at me. She follows me around as I head to the kitchen to find the carpet cleaner and paper towels, keeping at least 5 feet between me and her at all times.

I come back into the bedroom, dismayed aussie still trailing behind me. The pug looks up from his bed, and bolts, disappearing under Monacita’s bed. I try to tell him it’s okay, but he stays under the bed the whole time I’m cleaning up in the bedroom which now reeks. One spot comes out okay, but the other leaves a faint yellow tinge despite my best efforts. The aussie wanders around the room looking scared and upset through the whole thing.

I go put the carpet cleaner away and shut the dog door so she can’t get out to bark again til Wilde gets up. As I do this, Polly looks like I’ve just signed her death warrent.

I call her over and pet her and tell her its okay. After about 5 minutes or so, she quits acting like she’s about to get a spanking.

I go back into the room in time to see the pug stick his head out from under the bed, look at me, run out, turn around, and dive back under.

I give up, grab my cloves and decide it’s time for the breakfast of champions.

Note to self: might be time to discuss my current increase in temper with my therapist.

I found my first grey hair today. At first I didn’t think I didn’t think I would handle with anything near the grace that Ici did when she found her first hair, but I surprised myself later on when my only concern was that it was coarser than the rest of my hair, and I was worried that it might not bleach and take colored dye as well as the rest of my hair. Monacita didn’t seem to really care either. So all in all, I have a grey hair, and if it dyes well, I’m okay with that. Not that I’m dying it to cover up the fact that it’s grey. I’m dying it cause I got a provisional acceptance from my slacker evaluator after all. I’m going back to college! I don’t have to have normal colored hair anymore! Woot!

I got cocky. I admit it. I thought because I was able to shove one CSU application through, that I would be able to do it again. Find out who your evaluator is, call them, up, make their life a living hell till they let you in just to get you to leave them the fuck alone.

But these Hayward bunch are tricky, and slippery as eels. Damned if my evaluator isn’t leaving, and today is his last day. All his files are being reassigned. I may have to start over with a new evaluator.

It was interesting how he presented it (to begin with): “They reassigned all our files” As it went on, it turned out that he’s quitting or changing jobs or some such. And his files won’t be reassigned until *after* today…

If he gets around to making sure I really have a degree, and at least a 2.0 GPA today, then I’m in. If he doesn’t, I get assigned a new evaluator and it’s up to the new evaluator to decide whether or not to let me in. I can’t believe my chance to get into college is now in the hands of a guy with short-timers syndrome. “If I get to it before 6″… Five fucking hours. He just had my file open! Look at the Stanislaus transcripts! It’s the first thing listed! BS in Biology! And even *my* GPA is above a 2.0….

*sigh*

I got cocky. I thought I knew how to force the issue, but the bureaucracy stymies me once again. Which is appropriate I suppose. Who am I to think I know how to work the CSU system?

Deep breaths, calm thoughts, remember your place in the universe. It is small and insignificant compared to the mountain that is the CSU Bureaucracy. Like an ant on the apple the giant has just taken a bite of, you will be processed. Painfully. But processed. And if all else fails, tomorrow you can start again. They’ll run out of evaluators to shift you over to at some point….

This morning for breakfast I’ve had fresh raspberries, a can of Dr. Pepper, and a cherry clove. Can we say breakfast of champions? Woot!

Ironically though, it was good.

I enjoyed it.

That’s all that really matters, right?

——

The pug has been making more ambient pug noises than usual. Last night Monacita tickled me after we’d turned out the light, which made me giggle and shriek, which alarmed the hell out of Polly, who got up and went bounding around the room, and landed on the pug. Since Polly weighs twice as much as he does, he was understandably irritated, and proceeded to wander around the room making pug sound on and off for the next ten minutes. Every time we’d think he’d finally settled down, we’d be treated to another round of irritated grunts. They aren’t loud, but he sounded so annoyed, (and really, if you were asleep, and a 60 pound Australian Shepard landed on you, you’d be irritated too, I know, I’ve had it happen…) that we couldn’t help but laugh, which probably didn’t make him feel any better about it.

It’s been funny though, he’s been making more pug noises than usual ever since. He’s been wandering around the yard making assorted snorts, grunts, and little growl sounds all morning. He doesn’t seem irritated though, just oddly vocal. It’s weird. I grew up with cats, and always assumed that dogs were louder pets in general. But they aren’t. Sure, when they bark they are more noisy, but these guys are well trained and rarely pull that crap in the house. Most of the time they quietly watch and wait for your attention. My cats are not usually so quiet or patient about it. It doesn’t bother me either way really, but it does make the pug’s increased background noise more noticeable. Fortunately, they’re not loud, and are rather in their own puggy kind of way.

——-

Oh, and it looks like I have a pretty good chance of getting into Hayward once I clear up a few snafus. They want me take another Junior English Proficiency Exam (no thanks!) and they still haven’t gotten my DVC transcripts. Yes, the ones I faxed and paid for a rush on. Today DVC and I will have words. And perhaps at some point today I will find time to acquire a new cell phone. Mine… had issues and needs replacing.

I took a nap with the cat, with my arm draped over him and everything. He purred the whole time. I think he’s feeling better now. I know I am.

The cat seems to be in a state of distress. He came on the balcony and meowed at me through the window a bunch of times. I kept telling him to come in, but he wouldn’t. Eventually I went and let him in through the sliding glass door, even though his cat door was right there. He looked nervously, then bolted into the house. He’s been talkative, but he won’t let anyone touch him. A prolongued bout of ignoring him finally got him to come out of my closet and down onto the bed, where he talked to me for a while, and finally curled up on Hank. (A large, baby blue stuffed animal lion.) He startles when I turn around, so I’ve been mostly ignoring him, saying soft, nice things whenever he meows at me. It seems to calm him down a little.

I wonder what he got in a fight with this time.

Quote of the day: You should know by now that flash powder is the question and the answer.

Life just got happier

some days it’s just not really worth getting out of bed in the morning.