Oh good, the input box doesn't bounce around anymore. Stupid Win-blows. Feh.
Okay, time to spew random fear. I'm gonna die. I am not going to die. I'll be just fine. No I'm not. I'll choke and lag and fall apart. You mean like now? Only worse. Yeah. No! Much worse! I don't even have my books and the grading session starts today, it's already started and I can't do my work yet because I don't have the damn books because I can't plan ahead. What the hell was I thinking?! I was thinking the Net is my great big personal toy and that kind of attitude will get me nowhere taking online classes. Why'd TJ have to be taking Comp too? Only he's taking it from a real university, not a lame little community college. That means his'll be harder. Which means he'll soar above it because that's simply what he does. He'll outdo me in my subject of choice. Oh God, why me? Why does it feel so hard?
Hmm, not as incoherent as I thought. My heart's still sunk to my knees, but it will recover. I hope. And where the hell are my world religion notes from high school? *curses* I couldn't find them the last time I wanted them. It shouldn't surprise me that I still can't locate them. Yet it bothers me.
I've been having strange dreams lately. Just little dream-lets, really. An image here and there. Looking in the mirror at teeth overbleached to a painful glare. Hand-washing clothing into shreds. Grinding my teeth to dust. I don't clearly remember them all, but the obvious common thread is trying too hard and making a blunder in the process. I guess that is indeed how I feel lately. For whatever reason, expending effort always seems to take more out of me than the average citizen. I'm just naturally lazy, which should probably bother me a lot more than it actually does. Strange that I can remember all these dreams, even partially. Normally I can only recall a few dreams, maybe one a month, on average. I'd chalk it up to high stress lately and then leave it alone, but the stress is just beginning.
I wanna go home. Not the house I live in, and not my mother's house. I'm at her place now. I'm not sure where "home" would be physically located. Maybe it isn't. A friend of mine while I was growing up once told me that "Home is a backpack." She was constructed like that, able to exist in transit, flitting from one spot to another and absorbing whatever she needed along the way.
I don't think I could handle that. Maybe it's just my anxiety, but I seem to be strongly rooted to this region, the Midwest United States (or more specifically, the Great Plains). The earth, and the river, although I never visit it, are part of me. I wouldn't do well in a city. The air is thick will unnatural oils and smoke and trash odor, or at least it's that way in Sioux City, Iowa. That's probably a poor example though. Friends of mine who have lived in SC and other cities have said that SC has all the bad sides of a city, but none of the good. There's drugs, violence, and the entire city appears in shades of brown and grey. Real cities, they tell me, have culture -- theatres, live music by big-name bands, museums, that sort. (I seem to hang with artsy people. I don't know why either. Probably because I wish, deep down, for that kind of remarkable talent.)
Eh, I'm babbling, and I should complete online orientation. I'd really rather watch anime. I got to see the first three episodes of "I My Me! Strawberry Eggs" and loved it. It's bugging the heck out of me that I couldn't finish the series, too! Gah! It's about a man who tries to get a teaching job near his apartment, but the school there only hires women. So his landlady helps disguise him as a woman so he can get a job and pay the rent he owes her! It's very cool. I have gender issues and I particularly enjoy cross-dressing -- no, wait. Not cross-dressing, that's not the right term. Hmm. Probably cross-gender disguising would be closer. I like stories like The Song Of The Lioness Quartet (books by Tamora Pierce), Mulan, and the real-life story of Deborah Sampson -- all women who disguised themselves as men in order to enlist. The gender play gets me every time. I have a shelf full of stories along those lines, but most aren't well known.
I need to get the hell off this tangent, I suppose, although I am enjoying it. I actually attempted to download illegal anime on KaZaA just to finish watching Strawberry Eggs, a practice I'd normally eschew. Apparently every file I tried was corrupted or I need to update my software or something, though, because all the files played audio only. Fansubbed anime with Japanese voices - visual = a lot of Japanese babble I can't understand at all, and nothing else. Feh. Apparently I'm not geek enough to download anime, and I don't really care. This failure enforces my morals. But I still want to finish the series. There was a subplot starting with a girl student that I was dying to see come to fruition, and hell, I just wanna see more of that insane little gun-toting landlady. She rocks! Clever, too.
I don't want to finish orientation! I wanna watch anime! But all I have here is subbed Trigun on VHS, which makes it a bitch to find a chosen episode, and The History Of Trunks on DVD (a birthday present from a now-temporary, hopefully soon-permanent housemate, who RULES! I love Future Trunks, he's the best character in all of DBZ!). The movie's actually good, if anti-climactic (because it's a prequel to Trunks' part in the series, and ends just before he arrives in the series). Besides, I just watched it. Twice. Android 18's Japanese voice is the same as Meryl Stryfe's in Trigun, a fact I verified on the IMDb. I rule. Adult Swim's over and I don't wanna wait for Toonami suck-versions of over-edited anime crap. Feh.
Browser is fucking up again. I need to install Opera again, because this is driving me NUTS. Fine, done for now. Orientation, check coursework, attempt to coax Sin into driving me into the city to buy books (back up prodding with gas money), then pop in Lilo & Stitch or something. And remove those damn bagpipes from my playlist. Bagpipe hymns sound like tomcats mourning the loss of their balls or something. Ugh!