it's a magical world

I'm really, really hungry. Normally, I go to lunch around 12:30 or 1ish, whenever my supervisor gets back from hers (we're a bit shortstaffed on admin, we try not to overlap each other too much). But she's only just leaving for lunch NOW, and she usually takes the full hour, so now I probably have to hold off until she gets back. So no lunch for me until nearly 2pm. Goddamnit.

Man, I really wish she'd told me she was taking lunch late today, so I could've gone earlier. I'm really fucking hungry right now.

Wow, nothing starts the day out right like some asshole yelling at me over the phone and basically calling me an idiot. And all I did was pass on, verbatim, information that was given to me! Under further investigation (after I'd passed him on to someone else), I found that the person I'd asked for help had misunderstood my question and given me the wrong set of info (clearing codes instead of futures symbols), so I had in fact told the guy something stupid, but jesus christ. What a fucking jerk. If he'd just said, y'know, that doesn't sound quite right, could you doublecheck that, I'd have been able to correct the error, but instead he completely berated me for it and made me so flustered I couldn't even begin to sort it out. And now I'm sitting here crying at my desk over something that completely was not my fault.

It's amazing how something silly like this has the power to completely ruin my morning.

Happy Thursday.

The good news: I'm starting to feel less paranoid about the theoretical return of the strep. It's looking more like my lymphatic system just overreacting to the common cold or something. Of course, now that I've written that, I'll probably wake up tomorrow with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Like you do.

The bad news: the hospital bills from my actual encounter with strep two weeks ago? $755.70. Which, incidentally, is over a month's rent for me. For less than a minute of physical examination, a swab in the back of my throat, and a five-minute strep test. WHAT THE FUCK. And it should be noted that this final number come after an "uninsured discount" of another $214. The total cost of my sitting around in assorted waiting rooms for a couple of hours and being actually seen for less than ten minutes comes to nearly a grand, according to the US health system. I...don't understand.

For the second time in the past couple of months, the Chicago postal system has returned one of my amazon.com orders to sender without any warning. I received one notice card two weeks ago that they'd come while I wasn't home, and should they redeliver? Which I filled out and said yes, redeliver. That card was taken away, presumably by postman. I wait. I wait. I call. No, they've returned the package to sender. But the card I filled out? We never got that. Shouldn't I have received some sort of final notification about the package before you returned it? Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Well, sorry, it's been returned.

So now I have to go do the whole song-and-dance routine with amazon.com to have it resent. Again. I'm wondering how many times this has to happen before they stop believing me and think I'm trying to cheat them. Christ, this is so fucking frustrating. And there's no one to hold accountable for these things, except me, I suppose, for being stupid enough to assume that the postal system in this fucking city is actually designed to get my mail to me.

So apparently the bookcases I thought I'd ordered from Ikea were out of stock at the time, so they weren't part of the order. Um. Good to know? But at least I wasn't charged for them.

However, trying to order them again, I discover that while the bookcases themselves only come to about $40 together, shipping would add more than $100 to that. Um, no. So now what am I supposed to do? The nearest Ikea stores aren't in Chicago itself, and I have no car. I looked at some of the Target ones, and they're more expensive for way smaller bookcases, not at all worth it. Shit. Now what? I've got a lot of books and DVDs that really shouldn't be living in boxes for much longer.

It never goes smooth. How come it never goes smooth? < / firefly >

Oh, Ikea, how could you have so betrayed me? By which I mean, the order I placed online for furniture last weekend had estimated delivery sometime late next week or early the week after, which was most excellent, but then they forgot to get in touch with me about it like they said they would, and now when I called them, the earliest delivery is going to be September 19th. Which means I'll be living with no furniture except a bed for about two weeks. Goddamnit.

I cannot WAIT to have my own place. I mean, there's nothing wrong with my roommates -- one is a close friend, and new!roomie is perfectly nice -- but the little things are starting to really get to me in unreasonable ways. I don't say anything about them to my roomies, because I am fully aware of how completely ridiculous they are, but gah, on nights when I get home at nearly midnight after five hours of work and a looong commute and I'm really hungry but I can't cook for myself until I unearth the pot I need from under a mountain of dishes in the dish dryer thingy -- FEH I say. (Of course, this is far better than the one bad egg flatmate in Dublin who would invite all her twenty friends over for a party and then never WASH the dishes, stab stab kill kill etc.) I know that little things like being the only person who ever actually puts clean dishes/pots/silverware/etc. back in the cupboards where they belong -- well, it's an incredibly minor annoyance in the greater scheme of things. Which is why I don't bitch about it to my roommates. But little things have a way of adding up, and it's no one's fault, but that's why I want to LIVE ALONE.

God, I am apparently a complete hermit at heart. But that's okay, because in a little more than a month, I'll be out of here and into my own apartment.

So I totally just got criticized by a couple of police officers. I was walking back to my apartment from campus, and I was calling my boyfriend as I walked. A cop car pulls up alongside of me, and honks. At first, I didn't even realize they were honking at me, because, um, I was on the sidewalk, not trying to cross the street or anything, and not doing anything worthy of being honked at. Then they honked again, and I looked over, and they beckoned to me, so I walked over. And got reamed out because I was walking alone in a dangerous area at night on my cell phone not paying any attention to the world around me.

Um, thanks for caring? I live here. I know it's not the safest neighborhood ever, but it's not exactly the slums. I'm still technically on campus, on a large, very well-lit street, at twilight. I know this route very well. I'm aware of my surroundings. I'm always aware. I grew up in fucking Manhattan, where I made a habit of wandering around downtown alone at night. I'm not saying I could never be mugged, because of course it could happen, and I'm always aware of that possibility, and I pay attention to the world around me because of that constant mild anxiety. Yes, I was on my cell, because I get shitty reception in my apartment and it's easier to make calls outside, but that doesn't mean I'm completely oblivious. I wasn't even crossing a street! And again, this is a wide, well-lit avenue, still on campus, with emergency phones every half block. This is not some dark alleyway. It's very much out in the open. There aren't even bushes for ruthless sex offenders to be hiding behind.

I know they meant well, but they made me feel stupid and incompetent just for walking home, and that puts me in a really shitty mood.

Also, I had made plans to go out to dinner with the boyfriend tonight, and said I'd call him when I was done with theater stuff. (Suzan-Lori Parks just did a Q&A on our campus, it was awesome.) So of course, I call him, and he's like: "Did we make plans? I already ate. I'm watching a movie with my roommate and his friends. See ya later." So I kinda want to kill him now, because the whole reason I was holding off on dinner until after the show was because we were going out, and I'm hungry and pissed and suddenly bereft of evening plans and cops just yelled at me. BAH I say.

I have...far too much on my plate this quarter. Four full courseloads, a part-time job, an a cappella group, writing my B.A., and directing a big show...yeah, it's a bit much. I had a minor breakdown last night, in which I e-mailed my B.A. adviser and college adviser in a blind panic, but that's abated now. I'm not sure if I'm actually going to be able to fix the primary problem, which is a bit too complicated for me to go into here. But at least I've reachieved my usual state of overstressed!zen, which may make me appear mildly deranged but has proven to be remarkably effective in surviving periods of great stress in the past. Ah, well.

Of course, I now have no time for writing of a non-academic nature, which means fanfic and the YA fantasy are more or less on hold until I can breathe again. Which is sad. But hey, in a few months I get to be an underemployed college graduate. I'll have plenty of time for creative writing then.

Wisdom teeth yanked earlier today. Ow. Ow ow ow. Not happy. At least the bleeding seems to have more or less stopped. The drugs they gave me dull the pain a bit, but it still hurts. And I'm slightly woozy and prone to typos and suchlike. Ugh.

Also, I yearn tragically for solid foods. Applesauce and jello are NOT filling. I'm going to be very grumpy for the next couple of days.

So, that painful head-throat thing? Probably strep throat, says doc (lab results pending). I certainly believe her, seeing as a little part of me dies every time I swallow. Of course, until the results are confirmed, I can't start on antibiotics, so she prescribes me an uber-painkiller of total numbness.

And as I'm paying my co-pay and getting the prescriptions, I suddenly become lightheaded and my vision blurs in that all-too-familiar pre-migraine way. The migraine, thank god, has yet to surface, so clearly I was blinded for ten minutes for some OTHER equally pleasant and as-yet-unknown reason.

And then on my way to the pharmacy, the muscles in my calves spontaneously seized up, making walking incredibly laborous and painful.

And then I got to the pharmacy to discover that sorry, we're out of stock on these, we've ordered them in and you can pick them up after 2pm tomorrow.

So I'm going to be in massive amounts of pain for another 24 hours at least and there's nothing I can do about it.

*cries. a LOT*

I have discovered the downside to living with two of my closest Chicago friends: I never have time for fandom anymore. My muses seem to have abandoned me in disgust. I really really want to work on the dratted Harry/Draco, but whenever I have a chance to open the Word doc, I just wind up staring at what I've already written without the faintest idea of what to do with it. I mean, I know where the plot's going and how to get there, but the words just aren't bloody well coming. Apparently I'm only capable fo creativity when I'm lonely and depressed.

Not that I want to go back to all that, mind. I'm quite content with being in Chicago and having friends and such. I'd just like to be happy and still be capable of stringing sentences together, y'know?