shout it out

for those of you who haven't heard yet --

click here for a fourteen-day extension on your paid account, from the LJ team, for The Blackout.

[applause]

blergh

overslept this morning.  bah.  not much, but enough.  got up for a bit, then went back to bed -- where i had fever dreams of such vivid strangeness that it wouldn't surprise me to learn i was crying out in my sleep. [eta: what i remember at this stage: caught in a sort of tidal-wave-type thing in an inlet in southern california (though i have never been swimming in southern california). i climbed a tree and reminded people that the water that had just risen up was going to have to come back again the other way to get out again. then some friends and i were, i don't know, the bloodhound gang?, we were at a lunch meeting with some people who were going to explain to us what had happened, and at each place there were these butterscotch candies that for some reason we were calling caramel, and i had just put mine in my mouth when i realized that two of my group were collapsed on the floor, and the one next to me was wide-eyed with horror, and i said "it's a drug", and he nodded and sort of started to slump, and my vision went sort of gold and blurry and i said "it's a drug, IT'S A DRUG" and passed out. and when i came to -- in dream-time, only a couple of minutes later -- the Bad Guys were gone, and my colleagues were waking up slowly -- for some reason i was the least affected by the thing -- and i wasn't sure why a whole restaurant full of people had watched half a table fall to the ground, one of them screaming she'd been drugged, and the other half leave, and just sat there. and then -- these were all connected, as dreams are, but i'm not sure how -- we were locked in some kind of subterranean cell and i don't remember much detail about this bit, but it wasn't fun and may have been worse. at one point i accused one of my fellow prisoners as being responsible for "the surge", which was what everyone was calling the tidal-wave thing. we managed to bust out, i'm not sure how, but things were still happening behind us, so we had to keep running and make sure we were safely away. and then i was standing with one arm hooked around a lamppost, looking at the bay or the ocean or whatever that came up to the corner of my street, which it never used to do, and joyce summers was talking to me about willow, and i could see the same conversation happening a few hundred feet away, joyce and buffy, only they were moving a little differently -- so it wasn't like there was a mirror or something, though there had to be some explanation for the names, like credits, appearing on the stone wall above their heads and the exterior house wall above ours -- and i realized i was in some way buffy, and my sleeves were too long and i was making that unhappy-confused face she so often made. is it any wonder i woke up feeling worse than i'd felt when i went to bed?]

finally woke up again half an hour ago, feeling wrung out, lightheaded, dizzy, achy, feverish.  just the thing for the first week of classes, eh?, but i'm not in any shape to go anywhere today.  have e-mailed People In Charge.  may be able to see them later in the week, before each class's next meeting.

any minute now i'm going to lie down again, and hope i don't dream this time.

rar.

it is five minutes to seven.

WHERE ARE MY GROCERIES?!

phone's in my hand.  guaranteed delivery, indeed.

[eta: they got here about 7:15, which is outside the delivery window and i should therefore get a ten-pound voucher toward next time, which i didn't. have e-mailed about this. also, i didn't get my grated cheese, but that's so much less of an issue. in general, though, i have soda, and am therefore feeling better.]

from reginagiraffe

travel meme

1. Go To Mapquest.com
2. Click on Directions
3. Enter your Current Address and the Address of your Childhood Home (or at least the town if you don't remember the exact address)
4. Put the time and distance in a post like this.
5. Don't forget to repost these directions.

as i said over there:

mapquest can't find where i am now.  [pout]  but that's okay, because you can't drive to My Childhood Home from here anyway.

i put in my last US address, though, and got:

Total Est. Time: 5 hours, 56 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 358.09 miles

and i'm here to tell you that's incredibly optimistic.  you can do that trip in six hours if you never go below 60mph at all -- and i mean on 25-mph residential streets, exit ramps, the PA turnpike, the beltway, and the @#$%! 270 spur (yeah, RIGHT!) -- and don't ever stop -- for gas, food, toll plazas, red lights, whatever.

yyyeah.

358 miles is right, though.

my favorite part of the detailed directions is this:

13.  Merge onto I-70 W toward HAGERSTOWN.  76.8 miles.
14.  Take the exit.  <0.1 miles.

(okay, i happen to know that's a fine direction -- at Breezewood, PA, I-70 ends, or more accurately it joins I-76 and you have to get off 70 and hop through Breezewood before getting on the pike.  but if i needed directions to get where i was going, i wouldn't know that, would i?)

we HEART professor man

so i sent an e-mail to the professor i worked for at UVa, and with whom i studied the most while i was there as well, as it happened, asking for a rec for this scholarship program (locally, "award scheme") that would knock my fee liability down from Overseas Student (way expensive) to Home Student (a mere pittance, relatively speaking).  i didn't think i was eligible for it, as mine is what they call a taught degree rather than a degree by research -- but since i'm writing a thesis (locally, a "dissertation" -- a thesis is for a PhD; go figure), turns out i am eligible after all.

deadline is january 31, with a preference for january 24.

so, aiee.  sent this e-mail on sunday.  fortunately, the application is available online, so he can print out the one page i'd otherwise have sent him and send it directly, rather than waiting for me to send the form in the mail.  i apologized for the late notice, and gave the URL and the deadline as january 31.  didn't hear from him yesterday, obviously, since it was MLK day (though i had a panicked few minutes when i thought "oh, god, what if he's on sabbatical, just my luck", before my inner monologue had a good laugh at itself for thinking such a thing, since this is the guy who never takes a sabbatical -- hasn't in thirty years), but got an e-mail this morning:

I'll do my best to get it in the mail by the 31st. I might make it by the 24th (the preferred date according to the cover letter, which says the 31st is also OK).

yay, yay, yay.  of course there's no guarantee i'll get this thing -- my chances are something like 1 in 4, i think? -- but it certainly won't happen without the rec letter.  woo-hoo yay professor!

(a classmate saw me filling out one of the forms before syntax yesterday, and said, pleasantly, "ooh, what are you applying for?"  i told her, but i added, this being grad school, where the next thing after learning what someone else is applying for is deciding whether you want to apply for it yourself, "you can't have one -- you're already a Home Student."  which she conceded was true.  [g])