:'-(

I am trying not to be too personal about my landlord's business on the internet or with people who know him, but I am having an incredibly bad day, the bad part of which was all crammed into the last 3 hours. Basically I gave notice and he's not taking it appropriately. From what I know of him he handles people moving out without very much grace at all, but I had not seen him treat anyone the way he is treating my other roommate (who is simply moving out w/o notice, i think, because some people have limits on their tolerance), with threats and so on. I know a normal person wouldn't treat me that way, not least because there are a few tenants not officially planning to move, but I'm not sure about this one. I do know that I am right in the dispute, and being right is brilliant for self confidence and peace of mind. Apparently legally even if I were wrong I wouldn't have to deal with it today.

I have no idea what is going on with him, but he might be afraid for his mortgage with all of us moving. I bet that will work out for him though, because banks don't want foreclosures anyway, especially when they have a lot of them to deal with, like right now. And I know I'm hurting his feelings because I worked really hard to get along with him. I also know that I'll be carrying my laptop and other essential things with me until I get a new place.

There is a saying, that a trouble shared is a trouble halved. I have always always found this to be true. I have halved my trouble with 3 people, and 3 internet places, and God. So, I am only feeling 1/128th of being spontaneously evicted. I know that sounds kind of dumb, because compounding math of feelings is amorphous, but I think between 10 pm when he told me and 1 am when I am vaguely blogging it I feel almost all the way better. Better enough to go to sleep.

If only my break was the first week of April instead of the last week of May I could have handled all this when I didn't have 4 classes and 2 jobs.

Cramming

I am the worst at cramming, actually. But I found that I like studying Microeconomics more when I can internet it instead of looking through pdfs. I have developed a very nice, streamlined set of notes based on wikibooks. As a workaround to how I can't memorize graphs because there are infinitiy of them I have made a one page drawing of all the curves, each on their own axes. It's helping a lot.

So that is my cramming success story. My cramming failure story involves printing 200 pages of Astronomy pdfs 4 to a page, cutting them out, and making a tiny, tiny astronomy textbook for only about $5.

It's taken 2 hours so far.
I'm going to lightly tea stain it and make it a navy blue cover with !latin! and maybe a silver map of the orbits, including Europa and them.

This is all part of my plan to become an astronomy hobbyist with the scope and mostly an orrery. I am going to make one during spring break. Not a working one, though apparently you can make one of just the sun, earth, and jupiter from a clock because jupiter's orbit is 11.86 times slower than earth's.

That is the cheat way, but the real way apparently involves sandcasting and looks impossible:

Budget

I got a budget! I made it up and it is: $20/wk food, $20/wk books or clothes or anything. Rent and tuition are not on it because those numbers are set, and I don't need to carry envelopes to remind me of them. There is this budget system where you put your money in an envelope for each category and that is your budget. You can write on it what you bought, but I just buy what is on my list of food I am out of (a "Shopping List", if you will)* and from the other category I buy things that catch my eye and cost less than I have in my envelope, so I don't write it down.

I noticed despite making noodles, chicken soup, pizza and bread from scratch, I am consistently caught at school without enough food- I spend 8-14 hours out of the house, so I really should be carrying lunch -and- dinner. So I had been spending money eating out, even though I can make most things more deliciously, with the exception of Mexican and Chinese food.

Whenever I get a new hobby (tennis this spring is going to be even better than budgeting!) I like to research it instead of figuring it out by trial and error, so I have been going to budget websites. I can tell I'm wired differently than some of the people on there. The craft and cooking and vacation ideas sound wonderful (I need to find someone to carpool to Niagara Falls with!) but the haggling and writing letters of complaint sound terrible. I go thrifting all the time, but the way the articles say the clothes are "just as good" as new, name brand clothing is really unappealing. I shop at thrift stores because it is almost free, and I get things that are totally wearable or wearable but they are going to become something fancy! Like in the BNL song, if I had money to spend I'd just buy more thrifted clothes. Also this, for Nick.

Another thing that seems strange is hoarding change for other purchases. It seems sneaky. I think in olden times women had to manage money like that, so the money for gifts and such came from nowhere and not the budget. Nowadays it really seems like a time sink. The idea is to stay under budget by using lots of coupons, and then whatever you save goes into a jar, and do the same with change. One person said she writes her checks a little over and gets change to put in the jar. But it's nto money from nowhere, it is money you already had, and why not make your budgeted amounts lower and have a category for "things I want"?


*Sorry, I just got done with final papers so elaborating is the name of the game.

I like commuting, in a way, because no one else has to do it. I am getting motivated to stay at my rather dysfunctional house because no one else can do it. In the 5 months since I moved in, three people have moved out and one more has given notice and will be out in 2 weeks, and one is looking at new places.

It might not make sense that I'm more willing to stay when no one else is, but to me it just validates that this thing I am doing is very, very hard and it's hard for everyone, not just for me.

loving midterms week.

So, I am now totally hirable. I have been hired twice in the last three days, except that the first one, Student Corps, made me agree not to get hired for anything else on campus, but they haven't added me to their system and it's been 3 days and I can't sign up for any work until they do. So I accepted a position organizing the Porter Maintenence office because it actually exists. Later today I will find out whether I am hired for data entry- it is an amazing firm and 5-15 hours per week. I am qualified, but the people I group interviewed with were super good at interviews! I think I did a pretty good job because every time he asked us something the first thing that came to mind is "I get bored easily" as in
J: "Why would you be perfect for this job?"
Me: "I get bored easily, but this job is just part-time."
But I reined it in and didn't use the word boring even one time.

And yesterday I joined section for political science because I have come to terms with the concept that ignoring it won't make it go away. But political science is incredibly draining! There was one day where we watched 1980s footage of Ethiopia and half the class was crying. The emotional investment I make when I think about colonialism and conflict is exhausting. And also my classmates are really smart and know about world politics. I can find Burma on a map and pronounce its name (incredibly hard for people to agree on!) but I can't tell you what form of government it has or how its constitution relates to that of Kenya or the most recent military struggles there or what the US has done in Burma. I know I'm smart and I know I'll get a good grade in this class because the info we are expected to know is not too hard to remember, but I am undeniably out of my league in class discussions. When I read the Geneva Convention, I just feel bored, not inspired.

Art

Choosing a major is too hard for me. Based on my intended career as an art therapist it seems like art is a good major but I just get a weird feeling when I think about majoring in art. I don't really fit in with the art majors because they are kind of angry and cool. I do need to declare though so I went to the career center and got the forms (there is no one in the world I like less than academic advisors. Why are they like that?) and went to the art department to see how feasible this is, and the woman in charge of art majoring advised me to take easy classes along with my art classes because it's very important that I get at least a B in all of my art classes to be accepted into the major. I must have looked a little bit stunned, and she suggested art history. All the way over to my college I had to keep stopping and resting to think about what I am maybe doing. I think that is maybe a sign that I am not an art major. Also, I can't find a major that sounds good. I should have noticed that last year when I was applying but at the time Bio was sounding good.

Degrees of Aliveness

So I can't be the first person to notice, but different things are alive to different degrees, like whales and Wales. I thought of a way to stratify aliveness, which is how sharply the divide is between alive and not alive for that thing. Like, for