emlocke

Category: Whining

  • Top (Only) 4 Reasons My Laptop Doesn’t Suck

    My mom was watching me type this morning. I’d compare the sensation to having someone watch you sleep, and freaking out when you noticed, but that’s never happened to me. Not in a romantic way or in a creepy way. So, she was watching me type and I didn’t even notice and then she said, “So when you tap it, that’s like clicking?” I wasn’t sure what sort of slang she was trying to decode (she works with middle schoolers, who knows what language those kids are speaking) until I realized she had been observing my keyboard mannerisms.

    My laptop, for all of its flaws, has a few great features. And since it would take forever to list all the things wrong with this paperweight, I’d like to discuss its merits.

    1. The touchpad responds to tapping and has a separate touch sensitive scrollbar. I almost never have to use the left- and right-click buttons.
    2. One-Touch buttons that can be linked to applications or even websites. I hit Thesaurus.com with the push of a button.
    3. Backlit buttons and touchpad. Once, someone sat down beside me to tell me something and was mesmerized by the lights. She said, “Oh, pretty!”
    4. External volume control and mute buttons, as well as backlit audio controls for CD and DVD playback on the front panel. I can play, pause or mute even if the screen is down.

    I’m so mad at my laptop right now that I’m unable to think of a fifth reason. That’s because the screen, the one that can be down and I’ll still have access to audio and playback controls, flickers like there’s a very little night club inside. Also, the power button, which is located right next to all of the One-Touch link buttons, that’s what I have to use to power the thing down. It goes through the whole shut-down process and would say, “Windows is shutting down” for all of eternity unless I stepped in and cut it off.

    This machine is very dear to me. At least, I can only assume that it holds a special, secret place in my heart, and that’s the only reason I haven’t dropped it off the roof yet.

    I knew there was a reason I set up the Whining category in WordPress.

  • Seething Stillness

    My neighbor plays music so loudly, I can hear the chord changes. On Friday, I knocked on her door, pleading for peace. After twenty minutes and four drum solos on her door, I was fuming. She couldn’t hear me over the disco revival going on within. I wailed on the door with the curl of my fist and she finally emerged.

    Now, it is silent. But the quiet is unnatural and patronizing.

  • Verde o Blanca, Feliz Navidad

    Mom and Dad are at church, my brother is having dinner at his girlfriend’s house, and Maggie and I are at home watching John Goodman discuss Monsters Inc. on Inside the Actor’s Studio and eating frozen pizza in bed. Well, I’m eating the frozen pizza and she is snoring in my face. And the pizza isn’t frozen right now, I put it in the oven for fifteen minutes at 400 degrees, but I’m sure you discerned that. I’m sure you’ve also discerned that, due to 40 degree weather, all the snow melted, and because I am not at my boyfriend’s house, I am on the grumpy end of the Christmas-spirit spectrum.

    On the good tidings end, a) I got a Christmas card from the Cass’ today! They sent one of those family photo slides of Brian, Danielle and Larry, all looking festively adorable. b) I also got the self-addressed stamped envelope containing my final Children’s Lit paper, Reading for Healing: September 11th Literature for Children. I got an A! c) Comcast Cable in Ridgefield gets ABC Family now, so I can watch Gilmore Girls reruns every day over break. d) I saw Jess at J.Crew and she complimented my eye make-up. e) Maggie may be snoring, but she is keeping me warm.

    It was due to these small gifts that I mustered a merry away message: feliz navidad! To which one of my very favorite non-Christmas celebrators responded:

    rachcl85: con suelo ano y felicidad!!!! i wanna wish you a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a merry christmas from the bottom of my heart!

    Even without the snow, that inspired me to spin Maybe This Christmas, with special emphasis on ‘Rudolph’ by Jack Johnson.

    Quote of the day: “Now’s the time that we need to share, so find yourself, we’re on our way back home, going home” – Supertramp

  • The Lost Weekend

    Usually, when the finals season approaches, I accept the fact that the weekend before exams start will be worthless. I will spend three days in academic seclusion, studying, reading, anotating, outlining, writing, editing, counting words and pages, and I will accept that if that’s what I’ve got to do to get all the work over with, that’s what I’m going to do. I call it The Lost Weekend. Well, tomorrow is the last day of classes, exams start on Friday, I have three papers to write before I can go home, and I definitely lost something this weekend: my ambition, my mind, my will to live.

    On Friday, I looked for books for my children’s lit paper and realized that if I wanted to write about September 11th books, I would have to drive all over Western Mass if I wanted to write about September 11th because the books are so new that they are very sparsely scattered. But since public libraries do not hold college student hours, the search was put on hold for the M&C’s jam and to watch 13 Going on 30 with Holly, Lindsay and the triplets.

    On Saturday, I got up at 9:30 (that’s right) for a library road trip spanning Monson, Amherst and Northampton. I told Holly the night before to throw something at me if I didn’t hear my alarm and force me to get up, so I heard my alarm and sat up just as she was winding up to heave her pillow in my direction. So she says, “Oh! Sorry!” just as she releases it and I see it coming and think, “Here it comes,” in my head right before it hits me in the face. By the time I got back to school with all my books, it was time to take a nap and a shower and get ready to all go see Ocean’s Twelve with Jeremy. Why can’t I write a paper about George Clooney? With visual aids? After, we stopped at 391 where a really cute guy kept looking at me and approaching as if to sit down and talk to me. But he must have been running a fake out operative because at the last possible second he winked at me and left! (Jeremy later revealed that he had been giving him the “not a chance” look to scare him off. Thanks.)

    By Sunday, I was pathetic; a shadow of my former self represented only by the form of my body under the blankets. The girls got up at 10 to go have breakfast, and when Holly got back she put on her pajamas and got back in bed, which only influenced me to stay where I was while we tried to brainstorm new procrastination activities. At 2, Jeremy came over to fix my computer (pop ups…they’re popping up…) and Holly and I really were about to start our papers when we realized that we hadn’t watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets yet, so obviously we had to get back in bed and do that. Basically, this weekend was all about almost doing work and succumbing to acute laziness instead. Now I have a stack of children’s books on my desk, three more classes today and tomorrow, and I’m looking ahead to The Lost Reading Days.

    Quote of the day: “Belief makes things real, makes things feel, feel alright. Belief makes things true, things like you, you and I” – Gavin DeGraw

  • Wisdom or Luck?

    Everybody is so moronically clever with the wisdom teeth remarks. If one more person quips about my new wisdom or my old wisdom or my lack of wisdom, I’ll – well, I won’t do much of anything because my face aches and I’m a little tipsy on the painkillers.

    So, you turn twenty and your dentist still isn’t entirely sure if you’ve got any teeth-in-waiting at all (cue the wittiest of wit: does the absence of said teeth suggest an absence of my common sense? Don’t be smug!) and suddenly you’re teething up there in the top left corner. Six months later, you’re in the chair thinking about how everyone says you’re soooo lucky because you only have one to remove.

    In the moment, I didn’t feel so lucky. Nobody thinks one tooth is worth anesthesia, so they pumped up the laughing gas and the novacaine and just went for it. Was anyone in the room/office/building complex really that shocked that the conscious girl in the chair screamed when she felt the pliers in her mouth? And now, even in a drug-induced sleep, I’m having flashback nightmares.

    I’m sitting (upright, it’s incredible) at my desk in my room at home, trying to type – it’s difficult because the narcotics make my fingertips feel fuzzy. I’m not sure how to write about my wisdom teeth [tooth] experience without actually thinking about it. It can’t be any more difficult than talking without thinking about it, or swallowing without thinking about it, smiling without thinking about it or eating and drinking without thinking about it. I’ve never devoted so much cerebral effort to not thinking about thinking about something (something that’s actually been removed, and isn’t that the whole point!)

    In all the thinking about not thinking about thinking about it, I have come up with a philosophical dental theory: If, as everyone says, the number of wisdom teeth a person has directly correlates with the level of that person’s wisdom, how does it account for how lucky that person is? Because for all the terror of the procedure, I certainly do not envy the pain and process of recovery for anyone who had four teeth surgically extracted. So, even with this wad of cotton in my mouth, I feel pretty lucky. And if I can come up with a formula like that on codeine, I don’t know how anyone could doubt my overwhelming wisdom.

    “I’ll drink to the madness that made me this way.” – Kasey Chambers

  • Tear Tour 2004


    rough draft
    Posted by Hello

    That’s what I’ve got in front of my right now, where there should be a paper of four to six pages in length on a pattern of langauge in The Canterbury Tales. Blurred perspective and all. You can’t quite make out the tear stains though. Seriously, I challenge each and every one of you to just go ahead and try to match my record for number of administrative offices cried in while enrolled at Mount Holyoke. Today, I knocked my quota up to an estimated eight to ten. And I’m branching out in genre, too – not to leave International staff wanting for tears, I cried in the Global Initiatives Office tonight, approximately twenty seconds before they closed. Beat that!

    Okay, really, I’m not proud. It’s exhausting, inelegant, and very inconvenient, not to mention wet and blotchy, to be trailing tears across campus. There is only one way to put an end to my Grand Tear Tour; something will just have to work out the way I want it to. Something, anything, preferably my study abroad plans, but really, anything will do at this point. Can you tell that things have been complicated? Frustration…

    Quote of the day: “Afraid of change, afraid of staying the same,when temptation calls, we just look away.” – Barenaked Ladies

  • The Early Bird Gets Locked Out

    Last night, I fell asleep on the green couch in the dining room. When I woke up cold at four, it seemed more manageable to walk down to the car to find my coat than to climb four flights of stairs to my bed, so I stumbled out to the car, got my coat out of the trunk, and decided to go for a drive. So I drove through Chicopee and back, stopped at the twenty-four hour Dunkin Donuts for a Vanilla Chai on the way back, parked and returned to Mead, only to realize that my OneCard was in between the couch cushions.

    I had to wait for an early morning swimmer to walk by and let me in. I fell back to sleep on the couch around 6:30, only to be woken up by Holly and some Cracklin’ Oat Bran at 8. I had zipper prints in my forehead and barely enough energy to brush my teeth, let alone change clothes.

    I have writer’s block, FreeIpods.com hasn’t confirmed either of my referees, my African Violet is on a blooming strike, all the puffy paint is peeling off my M&C’s mug, I forgot to go to M&C’s, I have three papers due on Thursday and I’ve been wearing the same outfit for thirty-six hours.

    But today I got a text message from Lily, my absentee ballot came in the mail, I talked to my brother, took a nap in the setting sun, I ordered the parts for my in-dash stereo, my geology professor brought her husky puppy to class and I got to hold a really old rusty meteorite. So, at some point, it’s all going to balance out.

    Quote of the day: “Me, I’m drinking too much coffee” – Melissa Etheridge

  • An iPod That’s Free

    i too was a free ipod skeptic, but always the bargain shopper and product analyst, i spent all day reading online magazine articles and browsing other blogger’s experiences and testimonials and when i saw the new york times offer, i couldn’t turn down the chance to increase my word power and my awareness of international current events for $2.90 a week. who doesn’t think it’s hot to read the paper in bed? but how much hotter would it be to read the paper while jamming on my pink ipod mini?

    the deal is, i registered for the intellectually stimulating new york times subscription. now, i need five ever-loving friends with a credit card and a good heart to sign up for their own offer. there’s the times, of course. (apparently, my referees can’t use the nyt subscription b/c i already did, which is lame since the vast majority of my friends consider reading the newspaper anyway!) there’s blockbuster online, which gives you six weeks (a free two-week trial plus a one-month subscription before you cancel) of non-stop movie rentals shipped right to your door three at a time (plus two in-store rentals a month) for $19.99. there’s infone, which gives you five directory assistance calls to use if you need movie tickets, a nation-wide directory, and a lot of other stuff. you can use your free calls or not and you don’t have to cancel when you’re done, but you won’t get charged unless you call more than five times. there’s also realRhapsody, which is a lot like the iTunes service (including the random capitalization mid-brandname). for $1, you get a month-long subscription and five free cd burns, and you can cancel online.

    if you’re interested in different offers, visit rateipodoffers.com to read user ratings. some can be cancelled online, some you have to cancel over the phone, but who doesn’t love a little telemarketer brawling every now and then? it will build your persuasive skills and teach you to stand up for yourself. different offers show up at different times of the day, so if would consider registering for a particular one, let me know and i’ll keep an eye out and send you the link when it’s available.

    at first, i just wanted the free ipod. at this point, i’m so into it that half the fun will be winning the ipod. i’m on a mission! i can’t wait to tell the story. and to listen to all my favorite music while i’m in london next semester, since there’s no practical way to export all my cd’s. so visit my personal referral link and help a girl out! i’ll do something nice for you, too.

    quote of the day: “so let go, let go, jump in, oh well, what are you waiting for? it’s all right, ’cause there’s beauty in the breakdown” – frou frou

  • Writing About Nothing Distracts Me From Everything

    i’ve been bemoaning the fact that i had nothing to write about all summer and now i have lots of events and thoughts and humor to record, and no time to blog all about it. tonight, i rediscovered my very favorite time of day. the best part is, there’s plenty of it. it’s procrastination time! do i feel like reading the canterbury tales in middle english? am i in the mood to prepare for next week’s children’s lit course? do i even have to energy to locate my children’s lit books? no, no, and no. but suddenly i have all the patience and ambition required to sit here and write about it all!

    i dropped ethics and traded latin american studies for a geology course called planet earth. i needed to get out of ethics b/c the lectures were dragging me into a mind-vacuum, but i’m hoping i can go back and take latam next year. planet earth is fulfilling my last math/science requirement. i missed the first meeting, but i sat in the second class and the prof walks in, puts a giant lord & taylor shopping bag on the lab table, and says, “i need to run and get something, make sure you all get a pair of 3-D glasses,” and walks out again. sign my add/drop form, the course shopping spree is over!

    i’m also signing up for the first responder certification course, which meets every wednesday night for four hours, but satisfies my last three gym credits and means i could run on the emt team next year. so between that, the saw center, and res life, i have three potential jobs for senior year. now, if i could only find a steady source of income for the next three and one half months. i’ve got my eye on the coffee bar and the blanchard info desk.

    turns out, my dad works closer to mount holyoke than home, so i drove down to glastonbury to have lunch with him and exchange some stuff that i didn’t need at school or forgot at home. my dad has my 8th grade school photo in his office, and i think it’s still my favorite one out of all my years of public school picture days.

    quote of the day: “i don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – bill cosby

  • My bathroom is so clean

    I was still finishing my jazz paper on Friday night while my mom packed all my clothes. Then we packed up the car between six and eight am on saturday morning, under the cover of darkness. I saw CJ on his way to the library, but we just said, ‘hi,’ and it was so obvious that, for whatever reason, we aren’t friends anymore. Brandon was up and packing, too, pre-dawn. It’s funny, in the end, he was probably the best friend I really had at Hamilton!  My mom already had the cars running when I put my dorm keys under my RA’s door and booked it.

    So, I’m home for awhile now. I think more college students should move all of their earthly belongings right before Christmas because after packing and moving and loading everything in the car, I realize that I just dont need to have anything else!

    All my clothes and boxes and books and furniture are in a pile in the basement. I can’t find anything and I don’t know whether to bother unpacking or to just go ahead and move in back home. I hate not knowing what I’m going to do next semester and I hate feeling like I’m all spread out over this house where nothing is where I expect it be and I can’t turn the heat up as high as I want.

    But it’s good to be home where my bed is big enough to sprawl and the channels are where they belong and I can take a shower without risking my life to a biological hazard.

    quote of the day: “another circle I can run around, another dark corner I can get lost in” – marry me jane