All in the mind...
21 April, 2004 :: 2:55 p.m.
I still very much hate President Bush and wish to see him out of office...
That said, I am really beginning to hate John Kerry just as much. I'm sick of hearing him criticize current policies and then make broad statements that sound nice but mean nothing when he's asked what he would do instead.
Should idiot Bush have had some sort of plan before just marching ahead with an invasion of Iraq? Yes, and he should be criticized and take the blame for lying to get us into a situation he had no clear plan to get the country out of. I still think he should be censured at the very least for his lies, but I realize he never will be.
That said, I don't see where Kerry gets off criticizing the whole thing when he clearly has no idea what he would do instead. How in the hell did voters decide that he was a better choice than Edwards or even Dean...Kerry looks about as appealing as Al Sharpton.
So enough of politics...I am thinking that I may have let myself get all freaked out over my paper for no reason. No, I didn't freak out because I waited til the last minute; I freaked out because I used a personal day Monday night so that I could procrastinate and still get my paper written. I had been reading my sources and jotting notes all weekend so I was confident that Monday night I could sit at my computer and shoot my paper out. I do better writing if I wait until night when there are less distractions..I just focus better after dark. But anyway, around 5:20 Monday afternoon, the power goes out...and stays out...and stays out. I allowed myself to forget the worst thing about living here--last summer we must've lost power at least 10 times and most of the time the weather was fine, our power just went out. The best part is that we live about .5 miles or so from the boundary of being in town and on a different power company. Nothing like having your power out and being able to step outside and look down the road and see lights all lit up.
So I wasted a personal day pretty much because I couldn't do my paper...so I slept for a few hours. I woke up and the power was still out...I wandered into the kitchen and noticed I could see the light on the side of the building shining onto the sidewalk...I step outside and the apartment two down from me has it's kitchen lights on...clearly if there is a God, he is an ass and we are not on particularly good terms with one another...I then remembered that just a moment after the power went out, I walked into the bathroom and while I was reaching into a drawer under the sink, there was a loud pop and sparks flew out the outlet...so now I realize that everyone else has power and I'm worried that the reason we don't is because our circuits got cooked by the surge. I checked our circuit breaker and made sure everything was on and it appeared fine. That morning the power company came back out and said there was nothing wrong outside, so Jerry and I (yes, I realize that right after my entry about how I can't stand him anymore we are forced to work together and got along fine) went into the creepy back hall behind our apartment and found more breakers and started playing and eventually got the power back on for our apartment. The lesson from this whole ordeal other than I can still get along with Jerry when we actually talk is apparently if you have a surge, the only things that they harm are surge protectors. We have a bunch of stuff in this apartment plugged straight into outlets, but my computer upstairs and my gamecube, dvd player, etc. downstairs are all plugged into surge protectors. Nothing plugged directly into an outlet was harmed, nothing plugged into the surge protectors was harmed...the surge protectors, however, are now both dead. Yes, I have already replaced the one for my computer and will replace the other one only because if I don't, then my stuff with all be destroyed by some random surge, but I now believe that surge protectors are just something to scam us out of money--my old 13" tv upstairs and all the other crap that was just plugged into a power strip is fine and the power strip is fine...the only things ruined were the two surge protectors.
So back to my paper which I was able to put together and get printed out at home instead of having to spend all morning at the library...I got to class yesterday afternoon relieved to have it done...only like half the class was there and I'm thinking that's kind of strange for the day a big paper is due...but she lets us email her our homework and papers if we aren't going to be in class because she's cool like that...but then I realize that none of the other 14 people who bothered to show up have papers with them and I start freaking out thinking that I got the date wrong and they were due last Tuesday when I wasn't there or some shit. She makes no mention of a paper and reminds us that class is cancelled Thursday because she'll be in Chicago and we just start class... We actually had a great class and it's really odd because we broke up into groups. I hate group work normally and I thought of bolting for the door (she has no attendance policy), but I need to hand in my paper, so I'm stuck. I actually had a good time and participated!...in a group of all guys!...and I was in a good mood and enjoyed the whole class! Now enjoying class is nothing new because my bus eth professor is one of the best professors I've ever had (I have to say that for a tiny university, we have some kick ass professors in our English and philosophy departments)...so we read our sexual harassment cases and discussed them and Dr. M came out a few times to see where were at in our thinking and the whole thing was just enjoyable...weird. So I handed in my folder at the end of class even though I didn't see anyone else turning in a paper...I get home, look up the syllabus and discover that the due date for the paper is 4/22--the day she cancelled class for. Now I missed last Tuesday so all I can think is she had clearly told them previously that we weren't having class Thursday and I've been there the last two classes so maybe she told them the papers weren't due until the following week...at any rate I let myself freak out due to the power outage, used a personal day I didn't need to and wrote 8.5 pages that may very well not be due until next week now...Oy. I thought I was procrastinating, so it's not like I was overly ambitious or anything, but it feels really good to have this done and know that I just have my finals to worry about now in my classes....woooo. Now if I just get around to meeting with my advisor before the semester ends...