mercuriosity, posts by tag: rl stuff - LiveJournal (original) (raw)
26 August 2007 @ 05:01 pm
I just saw my parents off on the airport shuttle. They're flying from Seattle to Vancouver; from Vancouver to Hong Kong; from Hong Kong to Nanjing. There they'll meet my mom's dad and brother, who've already flown in from Taipei, and a relative from the mainland who's called an uncle according to the Chinese system of relational terms but whose actual position in the family tree is hazy to me. They'll be visiting Nanjing, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Yangzhou for the next three weeks.
This will be the first time my mom has been to mainland China, the homeland of her parents. It's the first time my grandpa has been back since he and my grandma fled for Taiwan. My grandma never did make it back. As family things go, this is...monumental. I didn't know how to tell my mom, "I'm really really excited for you", without it sounding hokey, but I said it anyway. Of course there was lots of stressing out on her part up to the last minute, and no doubt she and my dad will both be stressed out trying to catch up upon their return, but I'm just so glad and relieved that she and my grandpa have this chance now, especially since this might very well be his last chance to return home, and I know that was weighing on my mom's mind.
The downside is, my parents won't be here for my 21st birthday. The upside is, my parents won't be here for my 21st birthday! Wooo! Party at my house!!!1
I went home Wednesday evening to visit my family for a few days; we got a call that night to tell us that my grandmother in Taiwan had passed away. Not really a surprise, and in some ways a relief. On the one hand, it's very easy to feel guilty: if only I'd been able to see her more, if only I'd tried harder to speak with her, if only she had gotten better care, if only.... I'm very, very sorry that I never got to know her better, and that I wasn't more of an actual presence in her life. But on the other hand, it comforts me to know that she had other family members who were there for her, other grandchildren to see; and I hope with all my heart that even just knowing my brother and I were alive and out there in the world brought some small measure of joy into a life that was probably harder than I know.
It doesn't seem to be as awful for my mom as I'd feared. She mentioned more than once that my being there was a help to her, for which I'm glad.
...I'm struggling for what else to say. Thank you for all your kind comments on my earlier post. Thank you for your comments on the school thing, as well. You all said exactly the right things, and not in a "Oh, I know how to deal with this" way, but in a way that showed you understood exactly where I was coming from. It really helped. Unfortunately, I'm not in a very good place right now, mentally speaking. It's not about any one thing, but perhaps it's not surprising, given everything going on in my little world right now. It's so frustrating; I have a to-do list a mile long for my week off, so of course I've hit that low point where it's incredibly hard to make myself do anything other than lie in bed. That's always how it is, though. Depression wouldn't be as much fun if it were convenient.
I don't know, it could evaporate tomorrow. But honestly, I'm sort of hunkering down for a stretch of tough going.
( The saga continuesCollapse )
Bottom line: I have no idea what response to expect from Penn. I'd be disappointed not to be accepted, obviously, but I'm pretty sure I'd get over it sooner rather than later, because I know, on the basis of my visit, that it wouldn't mean I'm unworthy--it's just that the odds are small to start with, the competition is incredible, and it does take a somewhat lucky combination of factors. And if I haven't found mine yet, well. Try, try again.
*crosses fingers*
Huh. My Visa bill this month is a big one--though not the biggest I've ever had--but when I subtract the things I'll be reimbursed for (ridiculously expensive phone for my brother, groceries, $200 plane ticket to Philadelphia), it's the smallest bill I've had in a while by a significant margin. That's kind of...nice.
Of course, this should in no way be taken as a sign of fiscal responsibility on my part. I don't actually know how good the average college student is with money--you hear horror stories about 20-somethings racking up thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and that's not me, but I'm not as responsible or restrained as I'd like to be either. As evidenced by the fact that I just ordered two pairs of
gorgeous, irresistible
shoes. *cough*
(Oh god, I hope I get reimbursed for my plane ticket. I'm a little worried that the paperwork won't get there on time, and that would just be the icing on the cake, wouldn't it? *fret*)
28 February 2007 @ 10:59 pm
Today went pretty well considering that I stayed up too late last night and got up too late this morning, and was consequently (through combined lack of sleep and coffee) tired as fuck through my first two classes. For my lunch break I tried a place I hadn't eaten before and had a sandwich and a (good!) latte, which woke me up, plus it was a really good deal, plus it actually had places to sit and relax a little during the lunch rush, so that was cool. A+. Would buy from again.
Oh, and it totally snowed for, like, a minute while I was eating! Weird.
So, OK. I had adventures in Philadelphia! I'm a little late in recounting them, but better late than never, right? Some people I talk to in person or on the phone have heard bits and pieces, but I didn't want to bore them with the full details. That's what LJ is for!
( Two planes diverged at a snowy airport, and I-- / I took the one less traveled byCollapse )
--god, this is getting insanely long, and it's not even INTERESTING. I'm going to have to cut it here and continue in another post.
Stay tuned for Part 2, in which there are interviews and it continues to be arse-freezing cold.
Current Mood: long-winded
Current Music: mychael and jeff danna: the blood of cu chulainn
03 February 2007 @ 05:16 pm
Several of my relatives from Taiwan are visiting and staying with my family right now, and today they all came up to see me and look at the campus and see my dwellings.
Two words for you: Awk. Ward.
I think I said about two coherent things in Chinese the whole time. I really wanted to bust out my new language skillz, but at the same time I didn't want to make it all about ME, and "oh yay I get to PRACTICE ON YOU," and I thought, "Well, maybe they want to practice their English on ME," and also some cowardly part of me just didn't want to draw attention to myself by saying something reasonably fluent, because then the bar would be raised and it would be doubly embarrassing when one of them thought, "Oh, I can have an actual conversation with her!" and said something and I just stared blankly at them. OR SOMETHING.
So I smiled stupidly and nodded a lot and kicked myself mentally. Say it! Say it in Chinese, you IDIOT. And the whole time my mom's hissing in my ear going, "Go talk to your cousin!" (who isn't that much younger than me, but sticks to her mother's side like glue)--which, yeah, THANKS, MOM. LIKE THIS ISN'T SOCIALLY AWKWARD FOR ME TOO. There was a good moment when her mom spotted my Naruto poster, and I could practically hear the switch flipping in both our heads: "Aha, something we could bond over!" (Anime, the universal language!) But it was a case of "too little, too late" for this visit--now they probably think I have the Chinese language capacity of a damaged three-year-old, when in fact I have been studying this stuff intensely for almost two years now.
OTL
The weather today sucks, too, so basically, EVERYTHING'S depressing and stupid.
13 January 2007 @ 11:28 am
My period--and, consequently, cramps--just started, and here I am at work without my ibuprofen. Worst. Timing. Ever.
Why can't menstruation be like every other painful, annoying part of puberty, and just leave you alone to enjoy your adult years? I mean, eventually you get over being a spotty, awkward, metal-mouthed, slightly oily adolescent, but you still have to menstruate. (Well, I do, anyway. Can't speak for everyone.)
But enough about that. Speaking of work, I've somehow managed to be working every day of this three-day weekend. What with one thing and another, I got very minimal hours this quarter--which annoyed me a little, though I tried to convince myself that it was best for my sanity, if not my checking account--but then I agreed to cover a shift on Monday (MLK Jr. Day, so the library has weird hours), and just now I rescued a co-worker by agreeing to take her shift tomorrow. Which wasn't exactly how I'd planned to spend my weekend, but hey, at this rate, my paycheck might not be as measly as I'd feared. So there's that.
And, because I just wasn't busy enough to start with, I've got my eye on a couple of movies and a couple of upcoming concerts. Movie-wise, I'd really like to see Pan's Labyrinth, a.k.a. El Laberinto del Fauno, and I'm also quite interested in Letters from Iwo Jima (omfg Ken Watanabe). Seattle people: the first one's playing at the Harvard Exit, and the latter's playing at the Egyptian. If anyone's interested.
Music-wise, the Presidents of the United States of America are playing at the Showbox all through President's Day weekend! If you don't think that's totally cool, then you probably suck. Just sayin'. Also, VNV Nation are touring in the U.S. again; exact dates for the Western part of the tour haven't been posted yet, but I keep obsessively checking their website. It'll probably be sometime in June. Maybe it can be my graduation present to myself to go see them.
Right. Enough tooling around on LJ for now (even though it is TOTALLY LEGITIMATE to get paid for doing so, shut up).
Current Location: the coal mine
My sleep schedule's fucked up so badly its own mother would not recognize it. Which is largely because I have no impulse control, and will stay up until 6:00 (in the morning, no joke) reading things like this:
--which is nothing more and nothing less than THE best story, fiction or non-, that I have read in a while. My own affair with Harry Potter fandom was both brief and shallow (though, from another perspective, HP was basically my introduction to fandom--which, huh, there's a weird thought), but this is, simply, a timeless tale for everyone. Oh, fandom; how I've missed you!
---
I got a 3.8 in the dread morphology class, by the way, which is better than I'd dared hope for; though, of course, the main reward is not ever having to attend that class again (I had a nightmare, shortly after the end of the quarter, about doing exactly that--the horror!).
In other exciting RL news, MY BRACES ARE OFF. FOREVER. CAPSLOCK CANNOT EXPRESS MY YAY BUT IT WILL HAVE TO DO. Although, really, the whole thing is a bit anticlimactic, as I've still got quite a bit of metal in my mouth in less visible places, a retainer to wear, and loads of dental work to look forward to. BUT HEY. A VICTORY HAS BEEN WON. *does a victory jig*
Current Mood: groggy