trinsy: (bovvered)
Dear Step-Dad,

PUT ON A DAMN SHIRT! There has seriously been way too much 'DO NOT WANT!' going on in this house over the past 36 hours, and I for one am thoroughly sick of it.

Disgust,
Trinity

P.S. Maybe if we set the thermostat lower, we all could wear some more clothes. Just saying.
trinsy: (bovvered)
So the a week ago Thursday, my mom mentioned that the next thing she wanted to "do" to the house was get some ceiling fans for the bedrooms, specifically mine, which is the hottest room in the entire house (and yes, I've been kicking myself for that ever since we moved here). But whatever, the point is that the way she said it implied that it might not happen for a while, possibly not until next year, and she was just mentioning it in passing.

By Saturday morning, however, this passing whim has somehow transformed into us needing ceiling fans RIGHT NOW, and so she dragged my sister and me to Home Depot to buy some ceiling fans. This is when we discovered that Home Depot charges a $100 per fan installation fee, and my mom was like, "Screw that, we can totally put them in ourselves!" I pointed out that when my dad installed a ceiling fan in my parents' room back when I was a kid, it took him like, two days and a lot of fake swearing, which didn't seem to bode well for us. My mom explained that this was because my dad had also had to install the wiring in their room, but our rooms already have wiring, so it would be SO MUCH EASIER and we could TOTALLY DO IT. Which I knew was a total lie, but I also knew that my mom was never going to fork over $300 dollars to have some professional do something that she was convinced she could do herself. Plus, I like to think of this as proof that she hasn't turned into a totally useless housewife quite yet, and that's cool. (It could also just be proof that she's getting just as tightfisted and stupidly stubborn about money as my grandpa, but the other one is more positive, so we're going with it.)

Anyway, it was supposed to be cooler on Wednesday, and since you have to turn of the electricity to install these sorts of things and that means no AC, we decided to install them Wednesday morning, starting with my sister's room/the TV room, which is the smallest and second-hottest room in the house, so we figured it would be the best one to test with. Admittedly, it did not take two days to install the first fan, but it still took four and a half hours, a panic attack (from me, I don't like heights, especially ladders, OKAY?), and wiring complications (because who needs men when you have women to not read directions and fuck things up?) that could totally have been avoided if people had just listened to me. Then my mom had to go to work, and we decided that doing all the fans in one day had been overly optimistic, and we'd do the other two later in the week. We were proud of ourselves, and all was well, though personally I still think we could all have been saved some physical and mental distress if we'd just payed the hundred bucks to have someone do it for us, but what do I know? (I also had to spend that whole evening getting advice from my mom and step-dad about all the different careers I could have with my "mechanically-inclined mind" because apparently being able to read directions in an instruction manual {that is totally written for morons because those are the only people who would think to install these things themselves} makes you totally qualified to fly fighter planes or whatever. Look, I don't even know.)

Owing to everyone's schedules, we didn't get around to installing the other fans until this morning. My mom was at work, so my sisters and I (really just my sisters, because after spending most of Wednesday afternoon shaking, I have concluded that it's better for everyone {read: me} if I never get on a ladder again) set to work installing the fan in my room. Aside from some issues with a screw, it went way more smoothly and quickly than the first one, and we were all congratulating each other proudly when we turned the electricity back on.

Which is when we discovered that the fan DIDN'T WORK. Which, you know, totally would happen to me.

Several hours and phone calls later, my mom and sister have tried everything they can think of (including "soldering" something or something? I don't know, me and my mechanical mind have no idea what was going on up there), and I'm sitting in my sauna of a bedroom that not only doesn't have a working ceiling fan but now also doesn't have a working light. Because, you know, we tore it out. To install the ceiling fan. Which doesn't work. Which totally would happen to me.

To top it off, my mom and sisters installed the third fan in like, half an hour, and it's happily twirling away.

I hate my life.
trinsy: (wall)
Moment of Truth: Ever since I was forced to move to Texas back in August, I have gotten really annoying in my California love.  I mean, really, listening to me, you'd think Irvine was this shining city filled with arts and culture, and that it's just generally the place to be.  And it's really not.  It's just your average suburb.  And when it comes to California in general, I mean, California really is an awesome place to live, but it's not necessarily the greatest place in the world.  Maybe...

But I was talking to a couple of my Scottish flatmates a few days ago, and I was sort of going on about how much I miss living in California, and how much I hate living in Texas, and they asked me why California is better than Texas.  And like, I was so taken aback because at my university no one would ever ask me that.  I mean, I would expect that from Texans because Texans have an irrational love for their state that I don't think anyone will ever be able to explain.  But I always figured everyone else just sort of knew.  I mean, Calfornia ... Texas.  It's just one of those things.

And because I'm currenty in a foreign country, it's not like I could explain that a huge reason I don't like Texas is because Texas is like a foreign country ... except that I actually feel more comfortable here than in Texas.

But it's more than that.  For my birthday, my mom offered to take me to see Wicked.  And it sucks, because if we still lived in California, we could have done it, because stuff like that plays in L.A. all year round.  But because it's not going to tour in Dallas (or it already has and I missed it, I don't know), we can't go see it.  Or it's like, hey, people are coming to visit, we'll send them to Disneyland or take them to walk on the beach.  But in Texas you can't do that.  And in California "going into town" isn't this huge ordeal because there is no "in town".  There's houses and shopping centers; and when they build new houses, they also build new shopping centers because, you know, no one is going to want to have to drive twenty minutes to get their groceries.  But in Texas they just build new houses; and if the houses aren't close to grocery stores ... well, people just drive twenty or thirty minutes to buy groceries.  And I hate that because seriously, what happens when you're having a dinner party and an hour before it starts you run out of sugar or something?  You can't just run up to the store, and that sucks.

And I've actually totally forgotten where I was going with this.  But okay, maybe all that means is that you like what you're used to, and I'm used to suburbs, and the bottom line is that Texas doesn't really have suburbs, and so I don't like it.  But I still don't understand why anyone not from Texas would need it explained to them why California is better.

And I just got really tired (it is one in the morning), so I'm going to wrap this up for now.
trinsy: (awkward)
So today I achieved one of my life ambitions and passed out.  It was okay, actually.  The passed out part, I mean.  Everything afterward kind of sucked.

My parents' church had a blood drive today, and I donated, and afterward I walked over to the food area, and I felt really dizzy, so I sat down.  Some asked me if I was okay, and I said I was fine because I hate people fussing all over me (haha, if only I'd known!).  Then everything went kind of white, and then I had this really amazing dream.  The only thing I remember about it now is that there was some really weird music in it and that it gave me a happy feeling.  Anyway, then I felt something wet on my forehead, and I thought I was home in bed, so that confused me.  I opened my eyes, and I was lying on the floor, and all the blood drive people were crouched over me putting wet towels on my head and neck and stuff.  I asked what happened, and nobody answered, which I sort of get because I'd actually figured out what had happened when I asked the question; what I actually wanted to know was if I'd fallen on the floor or if someone had put me there.  The only response I got, however, was that I shouldn't close my eyes, which made me think I'd fallen because you're not supposed to close your eyes if you get a concussion (as it turned out, someone caught me before I fell; I don't know what the whole eye thing was about).  Anyway, then they put me in this chair with my feet elevated, and gave me this gross power drink and some Nutter Butters, and took my pulse and blood pressure, and it was really, really embarrassing.  All I could think was that I'm so glad it happened here and not when I went to give blood with my Optimal Health class last year, because if it had happened with Optimal Health class, you know I would always be "that girl who passed out after we went to give blood.  What was her name?   Curly hair, do you remember?"  And how awful would that be?

After we left the room, I almost passed out again, and a little after that my mom almost passed out as well.  Then she got mad and said they shouldn't let small people donate.  And I was like, "They don't.  We're just not small enough."

In other news, I've been trying to write my missing moment from OotP since, um, before Deathly Hallows came out, which is sort of pathetic, really.  And I've also been working on this fanmix for James and Lily for well over a month, and I'm still stuck.  I thought I was ready, but then I realized that Track 3 didn't fit at all, so I have to find another Track 3.  Because this fanmix is supposed to compare/contrast with the one I made for Snape/Lily, so it has to have nine tracks that compare/contrast with those nine tracks.  It's only nine tracks and I still can't finish it!  Which is also really pathetic.

Ah, well, such is life.
trinsy: (pest control)
Disclaimer: I apologize to any and all Texans who read this, but seriously: Build roads that make sense.


So.  I have been living in Texas for the past six days, and I am very happy to say that in just eight more days, I will be leaving it again, not to return for at least two months.  This is seriously one of the last states I would ever chose to live (though admittedly I would chose it over Montana and definitely North Dakota).  I couldn't possibly list all the things wrong with it, but brace yourselves because I'm going to try anyway.

First and foremost, the roads are terrible!  They make absolutely no sense whatsoever.  I am convinced that the person who designed the roads in Texas was a.) drunk, b.) high, c.) a complete moron, or d.) some combination of the other three.  It is the only possible explanation for the convoluted way the roads here are set up.  See, first you have your highways, which are like the freeways, except there are only two lanes in either direction.  But they have exits and stuff, so for all intents and purposes, they are freeways.  Then, running parallel to the highways are these things called "service roads".  They are also two lanes.  When you exit the highway, you exit onto a service road going the same direction you were going on the highway.  If you don't want to go that direction, you have to go through this little roundabout u-turn thingy to go the other way, and when you do that it puts you on the service road running the other direction which is on the other side of the highway.  So these service road things are basically one-way streets.  Then you have to go down the service road (running parallel to the highway the whole time) until you get to a real street.  But the real streets twist and turn and split and fork about every half-mile, and half of them are one-way anyway, and half the time you just end up going in a big circle without even realizing it.  And honestly, the whole service road thing wouldn't even be necessary if you would just put more exits on your damn freeway, if you didn't have to exit in only one direction, and if you built roads that were semi-straight and actually made a shred of sense!

Time and distance to do not seem to exist here.  The people in the stores are slower than molasses, and often equally as helpful.  15-minute meetings last over an hour, and the lights are all four to five minutes long.  When I asked for directions to the closest Starbucks, the person told me it was "just right over there", which to me meant that it was right across the street.  To them, apparently, it meant it was ten miles up the road.  "Just up the road" can mean anything from actually just up the road to over an hour away.  "Not all that far" is a four or five hour drive.

The insects and reptiles are a huge problem.  There are these terrifying black crickets that attack me every time I put my dog out, and people swap snake stories over dinner as casually as if they're discussing the latest weather report.  I have also seen at least one frog every day, though often more.  So far, I have not seen any of the killer ants I discovered in New Mexico (they were as long as crickets, and twice as fat as fire ants), but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

It never cools down here.  I hate that I can never open my window.  Every night I want to open my window and get a nice cool breeze, but I know that's not the answer, because even at night it is hot and humid.  ARGH!

Only eight more days...

June 2013

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