Verdict: hands-down the worst on record. The first part was extremely lonely, occasionally broken up by wondering why Hill hadn't gotten back to me about hanging out or not. She profusely apologized later and, to be honest, I figured plans had changed anyway. Come to think about it, she's the only person who got me gifts this year. That includes my family--which is kinda weird, but I'm guessing they'll give me cash.

I talked with a lot of people over 'net or by phone, some that are regulars, some that've been gone for awhile. I found out that Jen just got dumped by her fiancee and that it caused some shitty problems. I told her I'd be there if she needed help. And I don't have any cash, but there is no fucking way anyone I know goes hungry or doesn't have a place to stay. That and I can do the listening thing. Besides Jen, I touched base with Casey, mom, Gran, Michelle, Rachel, and a few others.

I guess the day got better as it got longer. I've never had a Christmas where I wasn't with friends or family. Another low point was cooking hot dogs and ravioli for Christmas dinner. Kabul had closed early. And I walked a mile to a chinese place that was normally open holidays, only to find it closed.

So, bluntly: Christmas mostly sucked.

And not to get into a bitching streak, but just to say: I was wrong about the being done with classes for the semester. Lisa wasn't able to figure out the complex, illuminati-like door key maneuver required to get into the locked psych building. So she hadn't picked up that late student's exam. In addition, I got an e-mail from one of the abnormal psych students. She was panicked about putting her exam in the wrong stack, that she was really sorry and had a lot of exams that week, but could I take a look? I figure as long as people apologize for their own incompetence, who am I to get upset?

But first things first. Food. For the last 2 months I've been on an asian kick. Chinese mostly, but some poor man's thai too. I can't get enough of the stuff. One of the places that feeds my craving is Noodles. Not because their asian dishes are pretty good. No, there they have bottles full of yummy red crack: srirachi sauce. I am addicted to this shit. I kid you not: I will order the pad thai with tofu (since they can cut their chicken about as well as the blind cut grass), calmly wait in anticipation, and then slather all but 2-3 bites with the stuff. I've been seriously tempted to order a crate.

It's a pain in the ass, having a really blunted sense of smell (and hence my really only being able to taste spicy or sweet stuff).

So with the tank at near full, I cleaned house yet again, hand-graded some shit, got Suzanne's notes via email to grade the 'mother died in India' student's exam, and sent off my CV and my Fjord essay to all of the profs writing me recommendation letters.

That reminds me (like it did then): I need to start on the APA fellowship. True, that's only 3 pages over 2 essays, but I'm kinda bored already so...

Just before I left the office, though, I got an email back from the incompetent chick. I'd told her that her grade hadn't changed, even though her last exam grade went from a fail to a B+. This didn't settle well with her and she got ornery while still trying to remain civil. I took a look and I still saw a BC listed for her. I guessed I might've read another student's score by accident. So I fed her some bullshit about the system fucking up and swallowing a 5 point assignment, that she did have the next highest grade by 4 points, and that's why there was the confusion.

I hope this finally ends my first semester of TAing.

Later on I tried finding A1 Transmission again. This would be the 2nd day and my 3rd time passing by the same location. And sure enough, like ghosts at noon, I couldn't see shit. I know the shop exists somewhere, but they're handy 'we're here' map makes no bloody sense compared to the directions mapkwest gives me. So I've given up on finding their asses. Tomorrow, I go AAMCO...or some place really close by, but probably AAMCO because my job is cheap and by extension so am I.

I also went off to do grocery shopping. I'm proud of myself. Where I used to just eat out all the time because I was busy or tired, I cook about half my meals now. I decided to buy more beef for taco meat, some shells, some more pasta, perrier (because I hard-on sparkling mineral water), and some other stuff. I forgot bath soap again. But it did occur to me for 15 seconds before my mind skipped along to something else.

I also edited photos throughout the day (see below).

Most of my evening was spent aggegrating data from 3 experiments onto one spreadsheet, in my stats program. It's not as bad as it sounds, thankfully. I went through and did a bunch of anlayses to see if Thingy Y was related to Thingy X. Some relationships between thingies made sense. Some didn't. But I can still push forward my version of events and have evidence to back it up, so I feel good. Hill told me, for the love of God, don't work this coming week. Only thing I can tell her is that, hopefully, I'll get to goof off for a week in Detroit.

Speaking of travelling, I checked out local bus services to see if using one of those bitches would be cheaper. I nearly busted a nut and an eyebrow when I clicked through Greyhound. Those fuckers want ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS for a round-trip ticket from here to Detroit. I'll spend 70 bucks tops driving there in my car. And hey, if it suddenly dies, I can get towed there for free with my saved towing miles. So fuck the public transpo noise.

And now the moment some of you have been waiting for. Back from the depths of my harddrive come: more photographs!

So:

And Only A Shadow Was Left

Comment: I heart being an artsy fucker. This is one of my 'chimera' photos, where I take two or more shots, using a photoshop algorithm to blend them, and then adjust as needed.

So that's my shadow in the foreground, where I'd originally been standing in one of the shots. Through the algorithm, however, the figure of me disappears. Throw in some pretty white wood, white light effects and that vaguely menacing dark lamp, and you have cool. I think it's kinda art deco.

Woman of the Wood

Comment: So I only sat on this shot for about a year and a half before finally publishing it. I did nothing to the actual shot, mind you, I just didn't publish it. There's a description already attached to it on the page with the photo.

This was taken back during my trip to Las Vegas. I was out there to meet Tiff. Truth be told I thought I was out there to have sex with Tiff, but situations change and overall it was a fantastically lovely trip. I think I actually wrote about all of it too, so go clicky if you're bored.

Snow and Sand

Comment: Been liking the chimera technique lately. This is a color one. I've found that reds and blues tend to look the best, and everything else is mostly eh.

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Hell of a lot more to come.

(15 minutes later)

I nearly forgot! My print company has changed some things. So now, drum-roll........... I can get my new shit in 14x28! That's right: 1 foot by over 2 feet. They retail 50 on the site, but I get a major discount. So if you see some stuff that looks cool that you want, well, huge, let me know and we can arrange something.

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