(no subject)

I'm unwell.

Partly this is lingering unwellness from the too much alcohol on Saturday night, which besides being sick (I might have made it if unworshipediety hadn't disturbed my stomach, but we'll never know) meant that I didn't sleep well that night, spent most of yesterday convalescing, and because Space Ghost is now on at 1:45 and I stayed up until 2:30 to watch Family Guy because I had missed it at 11:00, I didn't get enough sleep last night either.

But besides all that, there is just a sort of general malaise. I don't like being cooped up in this room. I want to be out somewhere, perhaps hiking (although it may be a little warm for that later today). Somewhere with air and physical activity. Or failing that, a bookstore in a nice bustling-yet-quaint downtown, perhaps. My actual useful work today is going to be about twenty minutes' worth, and then I have a somewhat less useful meeting to attend for 45 minutes to an hour. But I still have to be here the remaining 7-8 hours whether I need it or not, whether they need it or not, because that's how "contract hours" works.

Ugh. I've said for most of my life (at least in the time that I've thought about work) that I would be fine doing the same thing every day, but I'm starting to think that isn't really true. It's not that I want Excitement and Adventure and Really Wild Things, but I like to have a sense of steady movement, or something. I would have said "progression", but it's more like I like having something to point to and say "I did that!" (even if it's not much to look at). It doesn't need to "progress" as much as it needs to "build up", heheh.

My old position drove me even crazier in this regard because it was even more ephemeral - just dealing with angry people most of the time. So I made signs and forms and a manual for student-level procedures and one for supervisory ones and a separate one for video processing and yadda yadda. There's actually less to need to know how to handle in this position, so there's less to write about, but one of the first things I did was, you guessed it, write the manual (although it was also for my own reference).

So I am not really sure what kind of thing I am thinking of, here, especially if I also want it to coincide with my "produce no waste, or be involved in reducing waste" and "physical activity" criteria. Really what I need to do is get enough interest income not to have to work at all, and then I can spend my day doing stuff that I actually feel is important. :P (I was reading something the other day about how a lot of people would apparently keep working a regular job because they just don't know what else to do with themselves, and apparently my dad falls into this category because he has been going pretty stir-crazy since being laid off in February, but I think I would have plenty to do in the magical arena, at least.)

(no subject)

I'm unwell.

Partly this is lingering unwellness from the too much alcohol on Saturday night, which besides being sick (I might have made it if unworshipediety hadn't disturbed my stomach, but we'll never know) meant that I didn't sleep well that night, spent most of yesterday convalescing, and because Space Ghost is now on at 1:45 and I stayed up until 2:30 to watch Family Guy because I had missed it at 11:00, I didn't get enough sleep last night either.

But besides all that, there is just a sort of general malaise. I don't like being cooped up in this room. I want to be out somewhere, perhaps hiking (although it may be a little warm for that later today). Somewhere with air and physical activity. Or failing that, a bookstore in a nice bustling-yet-quaint downtown, perhaps. My actual useful work today is going to be about twenty minutes' worth, and then I have a somewhat less useful meeting to attend for 45 minutes to an hour. But I still have to be here the remaining 7-8 hours whether I need it or not, whether they need it or not, because that's how "contract hours" works.

Ugh. I've said for most of my life (at least in the time that I've thought about work) that I would be fine doing the same thing every day, but I'm starting to think that isn't really true. It's not that I want Excitement and Adventure and Really Wild Things, but I like to have a sense of steady movement, or something. I would have said "progression", but it's more like I like having something to point to and say "I did that!" (even if it's not much to look at). It doesn't need to "progress" as much as it needs to "build up", heheh.

My old position drove me even crazier in this regard because it was even more ephemeral - just dealing with angry people most of the time. So I made signs and forms and a manual for student-level procedures and one for supervisory ones and a separate one for video processing and yadda yadda. There's actually less to need to know how to handle in this position, so there's less to write about, but one of the first things I did was, you guessed it, write the manual (although it was also for my own reference).

So I am not really sure what kind of thing I am thinking of, here, especially if I also want it to coincide with my "produce no waste, or be involved in reducing waste" and "physical activity" criteria. Really what I need to do is get enough interest income not to have to work at all, and then I can spend my day doing stuff that I actually feel is important. :P (I was reading something the other day about how a lot of people would apparently keep working a regular job because they just don't know what else to do with themselves, and apparently my dad falls into this category because he has been going pretty stir-crazy since being laid off in February, but I think I would have plenty to do in the magical arena, at least.)

(no subject)

Whee. Disputed the Lulu charge since my package has never arrived and they have completely ignored my second and third requests to prove to me that they shipped it by sending me the "confirmation number". And as predicted I am going to receive papers in the mail which I have to do stuff with and this will almost certainly not be resolved before I go off to Canada. Really fun timing.

Something that confuses me is that I didn't even get auto-responses for the second and third requests. (This could also pose a problem in that it means I can't prove I made them - I printed out my LJ post where I complained that they ignored the second one, but I didn't copy the text, nor did I do so on the third. Gah.) I wonder if after there's been a "problem report" on a given order number if some kind of flag is set by the person who handles it that says "solved" (because I guess from their perspective, this was "solved" when they sent me back the useless shipping times page, ignoring the specific request I was making), and all further requests on that order number are ignored by the system. (That's dumb; like there couldn't be more than one problem? And you can't even reply to the email to get any kind of dialogue going - it's just "orders@lulu.com" which is a generic thing and probably doesn't take replies.)

Blargh.

(no subject)

Whee. Disputed the Lulu charge since my package has never arrived and they have completely ignored my second and third requests to prove to me that they shipped it by sending me the "confirmation number". And as predicted I am going to receive papers in the mail which I have to do stuff with and this will almost certainly not be resolved before I go off to Canada. Really fun timing.

Something that confuses me is that I didn't even get auto-responses for the second and third requests. (This could also pose a problem in that it means I can't prove I made them - I printed out my LJ post where I complained that they ignored the second one, but I didn't copy the text, nor did I do so on the third. Gah.) I wonder if after there's been a "problem report" on a given order number if some kind of flag is set by the person who handles it that says "solved" (because I guess from their perspective, this was "solved" when they sent me back the useless shipping times page, ignoring the specific request I was making), and all further requests on that order number are ignored by the system. (That's dumb; like there couldn't be more than one problem? And you can't even reply to the email to get any kind of dialogue going - it's just "orders@lulu.com" which is a generic thing and probably doesn't take replies.)

Blargh.

(no subject)

Also: my mother and father are both mysteriously gone, in her car. I have no idea where they would have gone, or what for. The only thing I can think of has to do with the new refrigerator we bought at the end of last week (which is not going to be delivered until August 3rd), but I can't think of specifically what about it, nor why they would go after dinner, as opposed to in the afternoon (neither of them works; my dad tends to sleep in until about 12 or 1 these days), especially since my mother claims not to be able to see well enough at night to drive, and the sun is setting out there. (Actually, I guess I don't know that's when they left; all I know is that they haven't come back yet. Maybe they left well before dinner.) If it's something else entirely, I am drawing a blank on any possibilities. I would have expected a note, at least...

[edit] Actually, wait... they had to have left sometime in the afternoon because the temperature inside the house was slightly over 80 degrees when I got home at ~7:45 (outside temp 71), and they wouldn't have turned off the A/C until the moment they left, and I don't think the house would have warmed up that much in just an hour or so. Now I'm kind of worried...

[later edit] They came home. Turns out my dad had my mom drive him to the hospital for emergency care on some dizziness/sweating/panic type of episodes he's been having for a few days (once is weird, twice is worrisome,...). Much poking, blood tests, X-rays, and an electrocardiogram later, they didn't find anything specific (heart attack, stroke, anemia, internal bleeding...) except high blood pressure, which we already knew about, but for which he hadn't had any medication in quite some time (for a few reasons), and generalized anxiety/stress. So they prescribed him a different hypertension medication than the one he had been taking before, and whatever the generic is for Xanax for the anxiety/panic thing, and he's supposed to go back and see another non-emergency doctor tomorrow to discuss the blood pressure thing in more detail. I was correct about deducing them having left in the afternoon by the temperature of the house; they went at about 4 pm. They took the cell phone with them but couldn't use it inside the hospital "because it's analog" (? I don't see what effect that would have), and my mother didn't want to go out to the car to call home and leave a message. They didn't leave a note when they left because it was a "let's go right now" thing. So, mystery solved...

(no subject)

Also: my mother and father are both mysteriously gone, in her car. I have no idea where they would have gone, or what for. The only thing I can think of has to do with the new refrigerator we bought at the end of last week (which is not going to be delivered until August 3rd), but I can't think of specifically what about it, nor why they would go after dinner, as opposed to in the afternoon (neither of them works; my dad tends to sleep in until about 12 or 1 these days), especially since my mother claims not to be able to see well enough at night to drive, and the sun is setting out there. (Actually, I guess I don't know that's when they left; all I know is that they haven't come back yet. Maybe they left well before dinner.) If it's something else entirely, I am drawing a blank on any possibilities. I would have expected a note, at least...

[edit] Actually, wait... they had to have left sometime in the afternoon because the temperature inside the house was slightly over 80 degrees when I got home at ~7:45 (outside temp 71), and they wouldn't have turned off the A/C until the moment they left, and I don't think the house would have warmed up that much in just an hour or so. Now I'm kind of worried...

[later edit] They came home. Turns out my dad had my mom drive him to the hospital for emergency care on some dizziness/sweating/panic type of episodes he's been having for a few days (once is weird, twice is worrisome,...). Much poking, blood tests, X-rays, and an electrocardiogram later, they didn't find anything specific (heart attack, stroke, anemia, internal bleeding...) except high blood pressure, which we already knew about, but for which he hadn't had any medication in quite some time (for a few reasons), and generalized anxiety/stress. So they prescribed him a different hypertension medication than the one he had been taking before, and whatever the generic is for Xanax for the anxiety/panic thing, and he's supposed to go back and see another non-emergency doctor tomorrow to discuss the blood pressure thing in more detail. I was correct about deducing them having left in the afternoon by the temperature of the house; they went at about 4 pm. They took the cell phone with them but couldn't use it inside the hospital "because it's analog" (? I don't see what effect that would have), and my mother didn't want to go out to the car to call home and leave a message. They didn't leave a note when they left because it was a "let's go right now" thing. So, mystery solved...

(no subject)

in misc.immigration.canada:

Did anyone give passport in perl at Buffalo?

It took me several seconds to work out they had meant "in person" (you can have your passport stamped with the visa in person instead of mailing it, if you like). I was seriously trying to picture a passport in Perl for a few seconds...

(no subject)

in misc.immigration.canada:

Did anyone give passport in perl at Buffalo?

It took me several seconds to work out they had meant "in person" (you can have your passport stamped with the visa in person instead of mailing it, if you like). I was seriously trying to picture a passport in Perl for a few seconds...