Our door should have a Biohazard sign on it.

If this was a dorm, I'd definitely do that.

3/4 of us are sick, all with different stuff. Alice is having stress issues that are culminating in physical symptoms, like mine is. She also had the sniffles, but I think that was cherry blossom stuff. Annie is having a wicked battle with her allergies, and they seem to be winning right now. I myself woke up with a scratchy throat yesterday, developed a fever last night, and now it feels like my chest is congested. Michelle...it's your turn...

I've decided to just not do my volunteer stuff. I wait until now to do it and now I'm sick and can't, so. Screw it. I don't get credit for it, anyway.

I did my informational interview this morning. I would grade myself horribly on it. I was sick and wasn't really prepared to do interview-style stuff, which was apparently what Dr. Cohen was expecting. Oh well. I did get information out of him, enough for 2-3 pages for sure. And he is a very nice person. One of the first things he said to me this morning is that I have a lovely laugh. I'm going to try to get his address from Dr. Campi so I can send him a thank you note.

In addition, I've done research for the green team stuff. I've also brainstormed on my US-China paper that's due Monday that really should be taking priority over everything else, but doesn't seem to be doing so. Sigh. Oh well. After that, I just have to do my reflections and final defense letter...and the rest of the stuff for class. Ugh, after Monday things are going to start going downhill. Finally. I hope. We'll see how much I can get done here this weekend.

Anyone who says we have seasons in Alabama is lying. Well, we have two. Winter and Summer. What I love about DC and Rockville is that there are clearly four seasons. We've seen things move from Winter to Spring and it just really is gorgeous. I'll share some pictures later.

Alright, I think I'm going to just sip my lemon tea and watch movies, maybe read. Maybe cook some pork buns. I lead an exciting life.

Laptop woes...and laptop yays!

Well, my friends...last Saturday, I learned that soy sauce and laptops are not friends. In fact, they really hate each other.

We were eating Chinese dumplings, since we have six bags of them and never eat them anymore. I had finished mine, and was on my laptop, which I honestly never do, have my laptop near food, I mean. So I picked up my bowl to take it into the kitchen and it slipped...and splattered the leftover soy sauce all over my open laptop.

I immediately shut it down and wiped up all that I could. Did you know that soy sauce is greasy? Upon getting back on it, it appeared that everything was okay. It had been a crappy morning (crappy week, really) so before I had a mental breakdown, I went to take a nap.

When I woke up, my trackpad was being strange, and a couple of my keys didn't work. Sleep made me feel better, but I still felt like crying because my laptop was broken. I made an appointment to take it to the Genius bar the next day.

So, Sunday, rainy rainy Sunday, I trek out to Montgomery Mall to the Apple store. The guy says that they'll have to send it out to be repaired. He won't say that I spilled something on it on the off-chance that they don't find it. If they don't, they can replace everything for free because I have the protection plan. If they find it, they could requote me up to $755 plus tax. This made my jaw drop. He also said that I could take it to a third party certified repair shop, but that seemed really daunting seeing as I have to rely on public transportation to get anywhere. I called Dad, who spoke with the guy, and decided that he would rather them send it off because it's Apple, so we know they'd do a good job. I left my baby there, knowing I wouldn't see her again for 5-7 days.

This past week was horrible. Thankfully, I have awesome roommates who lent me their computers so I could get the stuff done that I needed to on Monday. But the first deadline for getting the applications into the new database at work was Monday, and we didn't meet it. We met it barely yesterday afternoon, when I was very near to strangling myself with my mouse cord while slitting my wrists with staples and choking myself with toner. I've done about 250 of these applications over the last three weeks. I want a day off. I especially want something new to do. Hopefully I'll get that something new to do on Tuesday.

In the middle of the week, I got a call from the Apple store. They found the soy sauce, but they were only going to charge $430 to have it cleaned up, thankfully. I think that might be their ploy. They suggest an outrageous price, so that when you're confronted with a less, but still outrageous, price, you actually feel relieved and agree to pay it.

Anyway, I trudged home last night and took the shortcut, which meant that I didn't come by the front desk to check for packages. I went out today to Maxim, the Chinese supermarket, to get some more pork buns (AGAIN no Chinese spinach! RAWR!) and Japanese candy. When I came back, I noticed a slip on our mailbox that said I had a package. Two packages, actually. I went to the front desk.

A laptop-sized box came out. I was trying not to hope it was my laptop. I was actually trying to figure out what the second package was, but he said he couldn't find one and I'm not expecting another one. So I told him to call me if they ran across anything.

I came upstairs, getting increasingly giddy because what else could this be? It HAD to be my laptop! I opened the box after some struggling (what kind of devil box do they ship these things in???) and saw nothing but padding. HAD to be a laptop! I dumped the padding out and my laptop slid out with it.

AAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!

I shrieked and jumped around for a long time. I'm pretty sure Alice thinks I'm a freak.

So I have my laptop back. I missed her. I feel tons better now that I have it back, but this semester is still stressing me something awful. At least we're halfway through.

Another pretty crap day.

Well, today was not so good, as you can tell by the subject. I've tweaked my hours at work to Tues-Fri 8-5. It's tiring working that extra hour, and I have no idea why. It's not proportionately tiring. It's way more so. Odd.

Anyway, I ran out of work this morning and opened my big mouth to my supervisor about it, who told me to tell her and she would always find me something to do. I started doing the sudoku puzzle in my Express newspaper (free, daily) and she came by.

"Hi! How are you doing?"
":P I'm so bored."
"Come with me."

It scares me that she's always so efficient like that, and always has this grin like "you asked for it." The Japanese. They are an efficiently scary people.

She ended up loaning me to another department, since mine won't need me until next week. The department is Global Services. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but it involves more databases and spreadsheets. And a headache that's been going on for a while.

See, their old system was...well, old. They were moving to a new system with the apps from this year, and had all the scholars fill out the online apps directly into this new system. But now the new system is broken. So the apps have to be moved back to the old system. BY HAND. Like HAND-TYPING. That's where I come in. Because I am an intern and no one in their right mind who was getting paid for this would do it. But me? I do it for free. :D

The apps are about 24 pages long. It took me about 2 and a half hours to do four of them. I thought that was it. Nope! Global Services Manager Anneke comes by my desk that afternoon when I'm finished with the first four.

"Were you okay with the apps?"
"Oh, yeah, I was fine, no problem."
"Okay, I'm gonna give you more to do."

By "more" she meant "a helluva lot more." I got two done and was working on the third before the system hiccupped on me, I lost all the data, and only have fifteen minutes left. So instead of breaking down to cry, I left for the day. Seemed progressive at the time.

On the way home on the metro, I started feeling ill. I read about halfway, then had to put my book away and just breathe and concentrate on not throwing up on the lovely shiny shoes of the businessman standing next to me. I made it out of the station feeling much better, but still craptastic. I got to the apartment and got an email from my dad asking if I'd picked up the laptop case he shipped to me. I tracked it on FedEx and it had indeed been delivered. I stole my roommate's shoes to go downstairs and pick it up. In my pajamas. Because I just don't care after a long day's work.

I got down there and the attendant was someone I didn't know and hadn't seen before. I've made a point to make friends with the attendants. I told her my apartment number and my name and she said the package had already been signed for.

...What?

I said that I had picked something up a couple of days ago. She said, "Oh, maybe it hasn't been logged yet." And disappeared behind the desk. She came back a few minutes later saying that she didn't see it and then showed me the log where it had been signed. All I could see were a bunch of strange loopies that looked nothing like letters, much less my name, and much much less my signature. I told her so and she looked panicked, kind of like she didn't know what to do. "Oh...um...oh my god...Okay, I'll leave a note here for Caroline in the morning." She wrote down a strange, short-hand synopsis on the situation on a post-it. I explained that I would ask my roommates if they'd picked something up for me. She said okay. I knew none of my roommates had done that. They're all Asian. They have gorgeous, neat lettering and don't know cursive or whatever that language was that was supposed to represent my "signature."

So I've had a package stolen. It was a macbook case from Speck, so it wasn't anything really expensive. I'm disappointed because 1) it seems like Fate has decided I should not have this case because it was supposed to be a xmas present and has been backordered these last three months only to now disappear and 2) I love Fenestra and the security and the apartments and location and everything. I don't want to have to fight with them over paying for this if it was, indeed, stolen. It's their fault. They will pay for it. I just don't want it to get ugly.

And now I've stayed up way past the time I planned to go to bed. I'm looking forward to tomorrow being Friday, even though Saturday I have a field trip with my class to the Freer/Sackler galleries and then to Chinatown for some chow. At least I don't have to leave until 11.

Wow, long time no see...

I haven't updated in a while, pretty much because nothing big has been going on. We were snowed in for a whole week, with no metro or bus service, and there was a cabin fever epidemic. Thankfully, there were a couple of places in the town square open, and our RAs put on a Valentine's Day card-making party last Thursday for us to make cards for the residents of a nursing home. They also had free cookies and candy and drinks. Yay!

Our vacuum cleaner doesn't suck. Which sucks. (I love that joke.) We told our RA, Ann, about it and she's put in an order for a new one. Yay, we get a new vacuum cleaner!

We went to the Sichuan Pavilion across the street one night. It is really authentic Chinese food. Since we had Alice and Michelle with us, we ordered in Mandarin and everything. They had these pork buns that were the most flavorful thing I've ever put in my mouth. Definitely my favorite Chinese food, followed by the frozen mini-buns we got at Maxim, the Chinese supermarket (not as juicy).

Friday, the government was actually open, but the metro was not serving our area, so we couldn't go into work. I had to take a personal day. :( I guess that's okay, because I get five and I was wondering what I would do with them. They're expecting more snow tonight, but just a little, so tomorrow should be a work day. I hope so. I had just learned to navigate that office and now I'm going to be lost all over again. But the first time we got the big snow, they only predicted 2-4 inches. I don't really trust meteorologists anyway. I think they work for the bread and milk companies.

We did go to this restaurant called Bobby's Crab Cakes. It was...strange. We went there Saturday night, we made reservations for six (even though only five of us went). Their food prices are pretty high, so we were expecting a sort of upscale restaurant. Nope. It was one step up from a bar. We waited forever for our food, too, and it's not like they had tons of orders. There were maybe six tables in the entire place. It was just a strange experience. The food, when it finally came, was delicious, but...because of everything else, I don't know that I'd want to go back.

Oh! I also signed up for some volunteer shifts at the Cherry Blossom Festival. I think I'm working three weekends, so far. Should be fun! If you're in the area, come see me!

Today, I need to finish revising my Individual Development Plan, and write my second reflection, both of which are due tomorrow. Alice and I are planning to cook dumplings for lunch, and then all three of my roomies have a makeup class tonight, so I'll have the apartment to myself again. Will probably go to Five Guys for dinner...

Snowed-in Craziness.

I haven't updated in forever because we've been hit by Snowmageddon. Yesterday was the first and only day in the past five days that metro has been running, and it was at half speed and for only a few hours. But for those few hours, I went out and got more supplies because this snow is never going to end.

Since we haven't been able to eat out, we've been cooking a lot of Chinese food. Tonight we're cooking dumplings, which we've cooked before, and pork buns, which we have not cooked before. Should be interesting!

Anyway, I wanted to update this little snippet of fun that happened just a few minutes ago.

Me: So what's your favorite English word?
Alice: "Cookie."
Michelle: "Ice cream!"
Me: No, not your favorite food, your favorite word!
Alice and Michelle: "JENNIE!"

They're so silly.