He can settle any sea / But it doesn't mean He will It's amazing how life can be so crazy that you can barely stand it, and are stressing about every little thing... and one more thing happens (like, say, you have to evacuate the city because you're pregnant and they locked the freakin' hospital doors)... and suddenly, for some reason, everything is ok. I mean, everything is on its head, but suddenly I'm ok with it.
So here's what happened. My dad was in the hospital, I was stressing about going home, and then my Granny broke her hip and went into the hospital. I was pretty stressed about everything, and just barely managing to hold it together. About an hour after I heard about my Granny (this was Wednesday night)... They announced the evacuation orders for my county, excluding Pearland itself. After some looking, I found out that our "voluntary" evacuation for Ike meant (among other things) that the hospitals were locking their doors. So, Chad and I decided to leave, with no great idea where we were going to go. I slept that night, drove to my office to grab my computer, and spent the rest of the day trying to help Chad get the house ready to leave. We left about 5pm, after boarding most of the windows, and packing the animals, our photos, and enough clothes to last us through Sunday.
Monitoring the traffic leaving Houston, everything to the north and west was close to gridlocked. So... we headed east down I-10. Other than two pretty serious traffic jams due to accidents (slowing us an hour each time), the traffic wasn't that bad at all. Although it was extremely difficult to find a drive through place that wasn't closed and boarded up.
We started looking for a hotel room in Baton Rouge, which was a lost cause, really. We headed north up I-55, and when we got to Jackson without finding a hotel, we gave up. Chad and I took turns driving and sleeping, and we made it into Southaven about 6am on Friday morning. Crazy stuff.
Friday, we slept a little, ate Abner's, then went to the hospital so that some people Chad's mom works with could give me an ultrasound, which was awesome. They did both 2d and 3d ultrasounds, and got some great pictures of the little one moving about, sucking its thumb, and being difficult by covering its face. It was really cool, and made the trip pretty worthwhile.
Saturday, we got up early and drive to Huntsville, and visited both my Dad and my Granny. We had a good visit, and Daddy seem to be doing a little better. He's walking without a cane, and he was really glad to see us (and the baby). That night, we headed back to Southaven, intending to leave for home in the morning. But once we arrive in Southaven, we discovered that we could not go home. I-10 was blocked in places, and the authorities told us to stay where we were. We knew Pearland was hit kind of hard (friends lost a great deal of their roof), but that our house was at least intact, and not leaking through the roof.
So we sat back and tried to enjoy the "vacation". Each day, we made plans to come home the next day... but between the roads and the authorities, we didn't get to come home until Thursday. I ended up working remotely some, to keep from getting to far behind, but JSC was closed the entire week.
When we got home, we saw first hand how our house fared... we lost our fence (half the neighborhood did as well), and our shed (with the grill and everything in it), and (we discovered later) a little water got in around the windows on the back of the house. This may mean replacing all the windows and the back door, and replacing all or part of the drywall/insulation in the bedroom (and maybe part of the carpet). But overall, we didn't fare too bad. We have power, water, and gas, so we're all good. We even have groceries at the store, finally.
Traffic, however, sucks. My 45 minute commute has morphed into a 2 hour commute. But since that's my biggest complaint, besides finding contractors to fix the house, I can totally survive.
And I'm far less stressed about everything else, and more centered, which makes entirely no logical sense. But I'm enjoying it, while it lasts. :-)
Sometimes He calms the storm With a whispered peace be still He can settle any sea But it doesn't mean He will Sometimes He holds us close And lets the wind and waves go wild Sometimes He calms the storm And other times He calms His child ~Sometimes He Calms the Storm, Scott Krippayne
Thoughts... I probably think too much. Check that... I definately think too much. And generally not about whatever I should be paying attention to.
All of my female friendships seem to have a 6 month expiration date. Which probably says more about me than I'd really care to deal with.
I got called a tramp at kroger today. By someone I don't even know. No idea what the deal was.
I have a midterm on Wednesday, and I need to do well. I've started studying, but it's one of those tasks that seems like I'll never finish. No idea how the rest of the class is doing... I wasn't invited to any study sessions, so I'm assuming there aren't any.
I'm still working on getting the stupid voices for my first year project... no idea when that'll come through. I'm just short one male voice at the moment.
Spring break is coming up. And I need it really bad this year... I don't know... I'm like a fish out of water or something. I just don't seem to fit in my skin anymore, and its showing in my attitudes towards school, too.
Anyway. Enough randomness. Must get back to the studying.
I wake up and tear drops they fall down like rain... Blah. Been having kinda a blah week, really. I think I'm coming down with something (when am I not?), I've been waaaay stressed out at school (having your ass handed to you on a platter by the departmental progress committee will do that), the realization that New Orleans is never going to fully recover has finally hit me, and it's just been kinda blah.
But this past weekend was awesome. I enjoyed New Orleans Mardis Gras to it's fullest (and by that, I mean the drunken part but not the orgy part. Contrary to popular opinion, I do have a few limits). I caught beads (lots of beads), ate decent New Orleans food (port of call was really busy, so no hamburgers for us), watched parades, walked down Bourbon Street, and drank a drink that was literally more than half as tall as I am. In case you wanted to know, I cannot in fact hold my liquor like He-Man, everything is funnier when you're drunk, my drunken vocabulary mostly consists of the words "totally" and "awesome", and fire is the most totally awesome thing ever to be in a parade. Oh yeah, and I'm never (ever) allowed to drink that much Hurricane again.
But yeah. Back to the humdrum (but not boring, no never boring) life of a grad student. I've finished tonight's homework, and now I'm trying to decide whether to read Eugene Field while taking a bath, or to play Elebits (the greatest Wii game evar).
Oh yeah... all my pictures are broken. I'm working on that, it's annoying, I hsould have it fixed sometime this week (moaybe tomorrow).
School, Christmas, and Life in general. So I'm alsmot done with my last assignment for the semester... I have two problems left on my stats final, and I've done about half of each of them. It's due at 5pm tomorrow, so I should be in ok shape to finish it on time and stuff.
Santa visited my house last night... he left me a printer (not just any printer, mind you, a Dell 5110cn laser printer). Oh yeah. prints really fast, duplexes, and weighs like, 95 pounds (hence the reason it didn't get dragged to Memphis). Sanata rbought Chad a Banjo, which he says he really likes ;-)
Life in general... not so bad, today. Although I'm probably going to freak out tomorrow, trying to get everything ready to leave. *sigh*. I don't know... going home this year seems different for some reason. Probably because we live so far away, and don't get to go home as often. Who knows.
ok. So I took this graphics class this semester... which was fun, but stressfull, and i wasn't that good at it. I chose the final over the final project... and came out of the test thinking I had failed it.
so... That happened to be the last grade that came in... so I didn't check it. Like, I refused to log into banner and look at my grades. So I've been stressing over this grade for like, 2 or 3 weeks.
Finally bit the bullet and looked this morning...
I got a B.
Yep. Idiot is the word that comes to mind. If i had just looked like, three weeks ago, I could have saved myself at least that much stress...
Oh well.
So yeah. I made it through probably the worst semester I've had, and I didn't fail anything. And I only got one C. And like, 3 A's. Overall, I average out the semester with something a little higher than a B. Which is not that bad, really.
I'm back at school. Yay. My car is broke again. Not yay.
ok. So here's my life at the moment, in a nutshell:
Daddy is done with chemo. We think. For now. But we don't know, because the insurance is making a fuss about paying for another PET scan to find out how the cancer responded. At some point, in the future, after they decide it really is cost effective to pay for it... then he'll have the test, and find out whether he needs more chemo and whether he needs stronger (read: worse) chemo.
I have buttloads of stuff to do in the next three weeks. This week, I have a 20 page lab report to compile... like, tonight, so i can show the draft to the group tomorrow. And turn it in on Friday. Next week, I have at least one test, several homework assignments due, and two major programs due. And I'm missing class one of those days. The week after that, I'm going to feel like crap, and I have another major program due, and more homework and crap.... it never gets any better. I'm going to be doing homework until I die.
The doc thinks he's figured out what's wrong with me... and hopefully, this will be the fix-all cure. No more sick Deedee. We hope. *sigh* I hate being sick. It sucks. A lot.
Chad's going to Tulane this weekend for the game. I'm not. I'm doing homework... and maybe watching some movies or something. We'll see.
Meanwhile... I will either get like, no blogging done in the next week or so, or I'll blog insessently (spelling, anyone?) to relieve stress. meanwhile... I must code, for I am supposed to be in class in like, 30 minutes.
P.S. hacking computers can get you in trouble. So. Hypothetically. If you were going to hack. Don't get caught. :-)
Yeah. That's about it. I have this awful feeling that sometime this weekend I'm going to break my rule about not crying in the computer lab... It seems like everything is setting me off... I have cried more in the past three days than I have cried all bloody year... Yeah. So I guess tomorrow, I'll have to give Jeremy the "If I start bawling it's not your fault" speech. Hope I don't freak the dude out...
These coding nightmares are killing me... I tried to nap, but I started dreaming... I was stuck inside a java source file, and I couldn't get out... I was walking through all the member data and methods and everything (Like I was stuck in the computer screen, walking over the text)... I kept tripping over the dadgum curly braces, too.. they were getting caught in my shoelaces like some kind of wild vine or something. Then an SQL exception started chasing me through the code (I know it was an SQL exception, because it looked like a a giant squirrel... dadgum you, William)... I knew if I could make it into the Oracle database, I could hide in the User table I made for the site, and the SQLexception couldn't go there. But first I had to remember the password to get in... and then when I did, I couldn't connect to the database... And the SQL exception was still after me... and I looked at my watch and it was 11:00pm, which means the database was down for backup. For thirty minutes. And I knew I was going to die. The last thing I thought before the SQL exception pounced on me and I woke up was "Damn... Why didn't I just set up a try / catch block?"
And, of course, that made no sense to anyone who has never programmed in Java. But that's ok, you should get the gist of it (If you missed it in all the technical stuff: A giant squirrel was chasing me around a computer screen and I couldn't get away. And the squirrel caught me and did whatever sqirrels do to you when the catch you, but I missed that part, because I woke up).
So yeah... taking lots of drugs does weird things to your dream life.
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
