catch-up catch-all

That last post was kind of a bummer, huh? Local tragedies like that just make me so sad - especially when they are so, so preventable. I am trying not to dwell on it, tho', because... I only have 5 more days of freedom left until school starts again!!! I have to enjoy this time while I have it, because soon it will be time for me to return to that dark place of despair and woe. Plus, I'm behind on posts!

So. Here's a bunch of things I've been thinking about lately.

I got my grades last Friday (I could've gotten them online much sooner, but I really was not in any hurry to find out how badly I did). Not quite as bad as I was expecting, given the fact that I know I bombed the organic chem final. I got:

• A- in Genetics & Cell Biology I


• B+ in Japanese I


• A in Ethics & Value Theory


• C+ in Organic Chemistry I


• A in Organic Chemistry Lab

I'm posting these gory details because, ok, here's what gets me: the classes in which I feel like I really did well and learned a lot (Japanese & Genetics), I didn't get A's, and for stupid reasons (I bombed the first test in Bio because I missed the bus and didn't get a chance to look over my notes beforehand; and I kind of didn't turn in a large chunk of the homework for Japanese). I did get A's in Philosophy and Organic Lab, and I totally didn't deserve them at all (I got the A in Ethics because my Hottie Philosophy TA™ is, apparently, a big pushover - I did none of the reading and only a half-assed job on the three papers; and I have no idea how I got the A in Chem Lab - that class was the bane of my existence, I did really crappily on most of the labs, and I also bombed that final). I don't even think I deserved the C+ I got in Organic, because I learned nothing in that class. I bombed every test except for the first one (which was largely review from General Chem), and if roughly half the class still did worse than I did? That's pathetic. I should've failed that class, based on how much of the material I actually grasped and understood (let alone how much I was able to demonstrate on tests that I understood). It just bugs me that my own measure of self-progress didn't square at all with my actual grades. I guess I shouldn't complain, because on the whole I did better than I thought I deserved to. That doesn't make me feel any better, tho'.

Man, I was trying to keep this post fairly lighthearted, and I just made myself start crying from frustration, just thinking about having to go back to school again. Ugh. I hate school so much. But, unfortunately, I didn't do badly enough last semester to justify giving up and trying something else. God dammit.

Ugh, moving on. Monday night the DH and I went suit-shopping for him. He finished up his internship in December, so he is now officially a masters-degreed smarty-pants. He's going job-interviewing soon, so he needs suits. Let me put this in a bit of perspective for you: when I first laid eyes on my husband, back in 1997, he had a bleached-blond mohawk and was wearing a Godflesh t-shirt. He didn't own any dressy clothes until this past year. He wore a drugstore shirt, cargo pants, and Chuck Taylors to our wedding (we were married by Elvis, after all). I still have only seen him wearing a tie about three times, ever. Seeing him in a suit is just... bizarre. But not in a bad way. He cleans up good. :) Suits, however, in case you were not aware, are ex-pen-sive. He better get a damn job soon, because we are rapidly becoming flat-ass broke. He is going to the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio in a couple weeks. He has never been to Texas before. I told him that, if he gets a chance to drive up to Austin, he has to go to Chuy's and have the key lime pie. Other than that, there's not much I can tell him - Texas is not somewhere you can really explain to someone who's never been there. You've just sort of gotta go there and see it for yourself.

Speaking of traveling, Mr. Bean and Bean have bandied about the idea of going to London and Paris this May. Mr. Bean has never been off this continent, so he is particularly eager to go. The DH and I definitely want to go, too, but here are the chief problems: we are broker than broke; the DH wants to quit his current job, which he hates, before he is sure he has found something else, so we may end up even more broke before May; should the DH find a job somewhere other than Syracuse, we will need to be doing our moving during that month, because that is when our lease is up. Oh, and did I mention we're broke? I'm fine with us being really broke for a while if Johnny wants to quit his job. He comes home from work so pissed off most of the time, I'd rather he quit and we be broke than having to put up with how frustrated he is now. Plus, if he quits his job, he'll have more time to look for a better one. And if he can't find anything fairly quickly, he's said he's willing to take a shit job for a while just to tide us over. But if it comes to that, maybe international travel is not within our means for this year. And if he does find a job at the ALA conference, it probably won't be in Syracuse, so we will have to start planning to move somewhere else. And moves cost money. Even if he gets a job somewhere that'll give him a cost-of-relocation bonus, I'll have to stay here until the end of the school year, so there may be a few months where we'll have to pay two rents - which is even more expense. As much as I would love to go to Europe in May... as much as I miss traveling... I have serious, serious doubts about whether or not we'll be able to swing it. But even if we can't go, Bean & Mr. Bean are going to have a blast.

Hmm, there's more, but this is becoming the longest post ever, so I think I'll take a break, for now.