General Insanity

Two busy weeks followed by a busy weekend do not a perky bunny make. I am frazzled and underslept and disorganised. But it was a pretty good weekend... Nevertheless, next weekend I plan to be a hermit.

Friday night was Charlie's birthday, so after drinks with linguists I went out to have pizza and more drinks with the international kids. It was a predictably late night - which on its own would not really be a problem.

But then on Saturday morning I had to get up and go shopping, and have I complained before about how ridiculous it is to have grocery stores so far from campus? Ugh. I had a fairly long brisk walk just to get to the bus to get to the shop, and then had to catch a cab back with all my stuff. Spent the rest of the afternoon baking for various festivities.

Saturday night we had a party for ling department first-years at Sarah's house (which is, by the way, spectacular and far too nice and put together to house students!). It was a nice evening, although very polite and restrained. I guess we're all still getting to know each other. They're a nice bunch. A lot of people don't drink, so almost by default I am apparently one of the department drunks. Hooray?

Sunday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and Jelena was very excited about it. I made pumpkin pies, she made tofurkey (veggies and their weird yet delicious foodstuffs!) and Ben made proper turkey and there were an assortment of other goodies as well. It was lovely, and delicious, but it did take up basically the whole day! And, no doubt we'll do it all again in a month or so for the US version... ;-)

Unfortunately, post-weekend-of-gluttony, things got straight back to hectic. Had to read two of the most horrific papers and struggled through both phonology and logic. Thank heaven for happy syntax!

I am a bit disappointed though, it looks like Sociolinguistics won't be offered next semester after all, it's been cancelled. Damn! I will still email Dr Mendoza-Denton, however, make myself known and talk about my anthropology minor requirements, and see if there's anything she recommends. Maybe the Pragmatics course would count, but the philosophy angle concerns me.

Other woes - social security people sent me a letter saying there was some problem with documentation that meant they couldn't issue my social security card, and when I tried to call them I was on hold so long my phone just timed out the call. Ugh. May have to just go in on Thurs. Also, still haven't got my health care card either, which should have arrived ages ago. Also, something I ordered from Amazon was due a week ago and hasn't arrived. I have yet another email from someone wanting my SSN - or proof of application - or dire consequences will ensue. Also, my logic homework SUCKS in the most massive way. Also, the fire alarm went off in my building the evening and OH MY GOD it was deafening! And shrill and piercing in a torture-camp kind of way, complete with flashy lights that I'm sure could trigger some kind of epileptic fit...

And finally, some twat posted some really awful photos of me on facebook. Luckily, I was online when they went up so removed the offending tags so they're not accessible from my page - but they're still up on his, and on the pages of other people tagged in them! One was a photo with just my gut in the frame. Who tags a gut?! GRR. NotHappyJan. I WILL find a way to wreak a terrible vengeance...

But other than that, everything is going pretty well! ;-)