various things make a somewhat belated post

I... completely forgot to post here for almost two weeks, what the heck.

Uh. Nothing much has been going on? I'm still working overtime at the rental office. Our latest two attempted hires were utter duds -- in the sense that they couldn't even find the right town and were wandering around in Dryden instead of Ithaca, what even. This is what Google Maps are for! You check before you start driving or walking! *headdesk* Anyway, this past week was weird because of the holiday right smack in the middle, but we've been getting a bunch of inquiries from panicked transfer students since apparently Cornell ran out of transfer housing a few weeks back. Sucks for them, but good for us.

(Cornell's perpetual housing shortage is so dumb and shortsighted, and does seriously weird things to Ithaca's housing market in general, but it keeps me in a job so... *shrug*)

I walked to the Cayuga St. bridge over Fall Creek Tuesday night to watch the fireworks, which were enjoyable as always.

I ended up rescheduling my blood donation from a few weeks back to the evening of Thursday the 5th. I have been taking iron supplements off and on, and I guess they helped because this time my hemocrit was above the minimum cutoff and I successfully gave blood to the friendly neighborhood vampires, aka the Red Cross. *wry*

I finished this week's English assignment (poetry responses to William Blake's "The Tyger," John Clare's "The Sky Lark," and Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" (yes, seriously!)) on time by the skin of my teeth. I retrospectively wish I'd posted my response to "The Sky Lark" in the discussion forum instead of my response to "The Tyger," because only one person talked about "The Sky Lark" and managed to completely and utterly miss the point of the poem, which annoys me. I want my interpretation out there as a corrective. Alas, it is too late now. *sigh*

I have a new paper annotation project for Child Psychology due in two weeks. The first paper annotation was basically, "here is a scientific paper; please show me that you can read and understand it." Now that we've presumably mastered that skill, the next step is, "here is a list of topics; please choose one, then find a relevant paper from [set of databases] and explain what its results show about your chosen topic." I really like the way this course is structured, if you haven't been able to tell. :) Some of the quizzes could use a bit of copy-editing, but we have a straightforward textbook and a straightforward set of requirements and goals. It's all just so clear, I could cry.

My parents are coming up to visit Tuesday and Wednesday. The plan is to drop off all our donations to my church garage sale Tuesday evening, then go out for dinner. On Wednesday we'll do separate breakfasts (me at home, them at their motel) and then... I think some walking/hiking, probably in Renwick Wildwood Bird Sanctuary and then Robert Treman State Park, followed by optional visits to a little museum on Ithaca College campus and/or Six Mile Creek winery. We'll do lunch, Mom and I might do a bit of shopping, and then she and Dad will head back to NJ.

It's going to be weird seeing them without Dottie. It definitely makes life more convenient not to be wrangling a dog, but logistical convenience is not the only virtue. *deeper sigh*

dear brain, what even

I had a long string of vaguely connected dreams about apartments last night (known hazard of working for a renting company *sigh*), most of which were pretty normal... but in the middle there was a random episode where I'd moved into a company-owned apartment and was desperately trying to hide the One Ring from Chancellor Palpatine. As one does. So I strung it on a necklace chain and hid the whole thing in my toilet tank.

Palpatine stalked me for a while and made creepy insinuating comments whenever he showed up at my job. Then he acquired an illegal copy of my back door key and snuck into my apartment when he thought I wasn't home. Except I was, and I caught him red-handed, and then my bosses and I had him arrested.

After that I stopped hiding the One Ring in my toilet tank and started looking into drone rentals so I could drop it into Mount Doom remotely. :)